Trading Off Consumption and COVID-19 Deaths

Robert E. Hall, Charles Jones and Peter J. Klenow

No 27340, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This note develops a framework for thinking about the following question: What is the maximum amount of consumption that a utilitarian welfare function would be willing to trade off to avoid the deaths associated with the pandemic? The answer depends crucially on the mortality rate associated with the coronavirus. If the mortality rate averages 0.81%, taken from the Imperial College London study, our answer is 41% of one year's consumption. If the mortality rate instead averages 0.44% across age groups, our answer is 28%.

JEL-codes: E0 I10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-mac and nep-ore
Note: EFG EH
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (133)

Published as Robert E. Hall & Charles I. Jones & Peter J. Kleneow, 2020. "Trading Off Consumption and COVID-19 Deaths," Quarterly Review, vol 42(1).

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w27340.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Trading Off Consumption and COVID-19 Deaths (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:nbr:nberwo:27340

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w27340

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().