An economic model of the Covid-19 pandemic with young and old agents: Behavior, testing and policies

Luiz Brotherhood, Philipp Kircher, Cezar Santos and Michele Tertilt
Additional contact information
Philipp Kircher: Université catholique de Louvain, LIDAM/CORE, Belgium

No 2021034, LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE from Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE)

Abstract: This paper investigates the importance of the age composition in the Covid-19 pandemic. We augment a standard SIR epidemiological model with individual choices on work and non-work social distancing. Infected individuals are initially uncertain unless they are tested. We find that older individuals socially distance themselves substantially in equilibrium. An optimal lockdown then confines the young more. The strictness and economic costs of the optimal lockdown depend on whether or not individuals can telework. Testing and quarantines save lives, even if conducted just on the young. When some testing is available, the optimal lockdown is much lighter and GDP rises even compared with a no-policy benchmark.

Keywords: Covid-19; testing; social distancing; age; age-specific policies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C63 D62 E17 I10 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 57
Date: 2021-04-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-cwa, nep-dge, nep-hea and nep-mac
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://dial.uclouvain.be/pr/boreal/en/object/bore ... tastream/PDF_01/view (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: An Economic Model of the COVID-19 Pandemic With Young and Old Agents: Behavior, Testing and Policies (2020)
Working Paper: An economic model of the Covid-19 pandemic with young and old agents: Behavior, testing and policies (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cor:louvco:2021034

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE from Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE) Voie du Roman Pays 34, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium). Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Alain GILLIS ().