Optimal Targeted Lockdowns in a Multi-Group SIR Model
By Daron Acemoglu, Victor Chernozhukov, I. Werning, M. Whinston. American Economic Review: Insights, 2020
658 citations recorded by the source corpus.
We study targeted lockdowns in a multigroup SIR model where infection, hospitalization, and fatality rates vary between groups—in particular between the “young,” the “middle-aged,” and the “old.” Our model enables a tractable quantitative analysis of optimal policy. For baseline parameter values for the COVID-19 pandemic applied to the US, we find that optimal policies differentially targeting risk/age groups significantly outperform optimal uniform policies and most of the gains can be realized by having stricter protective measures such as lockdowns on the more vulnerable, old group. Intuitively, a strict and long lockdown for the old both reduces infections and enables less strict lockdowns for the lower-risk groups. (JEL H51, I12, I18, J13, J14)
Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, General Health Professions, Modeling and Simulation
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/778536381395c7de908ef6a7a415097f0b73a837
How researchers see this paper
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In Economics and Econometrics
- Charles I. Jones
- Peter J. Klenow
- C. Tisdell
- David Yanagizawa-Drott
- Aakaash Rao
- Christopher Roth
- Andrew T. Levin
- Leonardo Bursztyn
In General Health Professions
In Modeling and Simulation
Citations in the corpus
- Assessing the age specificity of infection fatality rates for COVID-19: systematic review, meta-analysis, and public policy implications (2020, background): “Indeed, even if an outbreak is mainly concentrated among younger people, it may be very difficult to prevent the virus from spreading among older adults [141].”
- Trading Off Consumption and COVID-19 Deaths (2020, background): “Acemoglu et al. (2020) provide a normative analysis in this vein.”
- Misinformation During a Pandemic (2020, positive): “We thus adapt the multi-group SIR model introduced in Acemoglu et al. (2020) to model four groups: the “untreated” population between 25 and 64 (of size Nyu); the “treated” population between 25 and 64 (of size Nyt); the “untreated” population aged 65 and older (of size Nou); and the “treated” popul”
- Economic, social and political issues raised by the COVID-19 pandemic (2020, positive): “The possibility of group lockdown policies and the ethical implications of them need to be explicitly considered. ockdowns of social groups as proposed by Acemoglu et al. (2020) are likely to create serious economic problems for ome of the targeted groups.”