The social value of a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine: willingness to pay estimates from four Western countries

Joan Costa-Font, S. Harrison, C. Rudisill and Luca Salmasi

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: SARS-CoV-2 vaccines give rise to positive externalities on population health, society and the economy in addition to protecting the health of vaccinated individuals. Hence, the social value of such a vaccine exceeds its market value. This paper estimates the willingness to pay (WTP) for a hypothetical SARS-CoV-2 vaccine (or shadow prices), in four countries, namely the United States (US), the United Kingdom, Spain and Italy during the first wave of the pandemic when COVID-19 vaccines were in development but not yet approved. WTP estimates are elicited using a payment card method to avoid “yea saying” biases, and we study the effect of protest responses, sample selection bias, as well as the influence of trust in government and risk exposure when estimating the WTP. Our estimates suggest evidence of an average value of a hypothetical vaccine of 100–200 US dollars once adjusted for purchasing power parity. Estimates are robust to a number of checks.

Keywords: social value; willingness to pay; vaccine value; vaccine attitudes; payment card; sample selection; protest responses; positive externalities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H23 H42 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2023-08-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dcm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Health Economics, 1, August, 2023, 32(8), pp. 1818 - 1835. ISSN: 1057-9230

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/118625/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The social value of a SARS‐CoV‐2 vaccine: Willingness to pay estimates from four western countries (2023)
Working Paper: The Social Value of a SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine: Willingness to Pay Estimates from Four Western Countries (2021)
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:ehl:lserod:118625

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().