Tag Archives: SIR model

Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, July 2022, with Martin Gonzalez-Eiras. PDF (local copy). We investigate how politico-economic factors shaped government responses to the spread of COVID-19. Our simple framework uses epidemiological, economic and politico-economic arguments. Confronting the theory with US state level data we find strong evidence for partisanship even when we control for fundamentals including the electorate’s political views. Moreover, we detect an important role...

CEPR Discussion Paper 16906, January 2022, with Martin Gonzalez-Eiras. PDF (local copy). We investigate how politico-economic factors shaped government responses to the spread of COVID-19. Our simple framework uses epidemiological, economic and politico-economic arguments. Confronting the theory with US state level data we find strong evidence for partisanship even when we control for fundamentals including the electorate’s political views. Moreover, we detect an important role for the...

CEPR Discussion Paper 15541, December 2020, with Martin Gonzalez-Eiras. PDF (local copy). We propose a flexible model of infectious dynamics with a single endogenous state variable and economic choices. We characterize equilibrium, optimal outcomes, static and dynamic externalities, and prove the following: (i) A lockdown generically is followed by policies to stimulate activity. (ii) Re-infection risk lowers the activity level chosen by the government early on and, for small static...

VoxEU, June 5, 2020, with Martin Gonzalez-Eiras. HTML. A comparison of epidemiological models for use in economic analyses, based on the CEPR discussion paper.

CEPR Discussion Paper 14791, May 2020, with Martin Gonzalez-Eiras. PDF (local copy). We contrast the canonical epidemiological SIR model due to Kermack and McKendrick (1927) with more tractable alternatives that offer similar degrees of “realism” and flexibility. We provide results connecting the different models which can be exploited for calibration purposes. We use the expected spread of COVID-19 in the United States to exemplify our results.