Optimal Age-Based Vaccination and Economic Mitigation Policies for the Second Phase of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Andrew Glover, Jonathan Heathcote, Dirk Krueger and José-Víctor Ríos-Rull

No RWP 21-15, Research Working Paper from Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City

Abstract: In this paper we ask how to best allocate a given time-varying supply of vaccines during the second phase of the Covid-19 pandemic across individuals of different ages. Building on the heterogeneous household model of optimal economic mitigation and redistribution developed by Glover et al. (2021), we contrast the actual vaccine deployment path that prioritized older individuals with one that first vaccinates younger workers. Vaccinating older adults first saves more lives but slows the economic recovery relative to inoculating younger adults first. Vaccines carry large welfare benefits in both scenarios (relative to a world without vaccines), but the older-first policy is optimal under a utilitarian social welfare function.

Keywords: COVID-19; Vaccination paths (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E21 E63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35
Date: 2021-12-17
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge and nep-mac
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.kansascityfed.org/documents/8557/rwp21 ... kruegerrios-rull.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Optimal age-Based vaccination and economic mitigation policies for the second phase of the covid-19 pandemic (2022)
Working Paper: Optimal Age-Based Vaccination and Economic Mitigation Policies for the Second Phase of the Covid-19 Pandemic (2022)
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:fip:fedkrw:93598

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

DOI: 10.18651/RWP2021-15

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Research Working Paper from Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Zach Kastens ().