Abstract
Economics provides theories of private behavior and government policy that can be integrated with mathematical epidemiology, as illustrated in a susceptible-infected-susceptible model of infection. Confronting infections, people decide on prevention and therapy with regard to consequences for themselves but not for others, the economic concept of an externality. Public policy can optimally offset the externality by subsidizing prevention and therapy at equal rates (or less practically, taxing infection). Absent such interventions, seemingly beneficial changes such as a decreased cost of infection can perversely lower welfare by worsening the externality, the economic concept of immiserization. Other issues discussed include uniqueness and stability of the optimal steady state and its response to parameter changes.
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Notes
- 1.
This chapter is not a survey of contributions by economists to the study of infectious diseases and does not undertake any literature review. Paper [3] provides such a survey and should be seen as a complement to this chapter.
- 2.
Paper [6] mistakenly stated (pp.13–14 and Fig. 1c) that there could be a stable case with both isoclines negatively sloped and with the s-isocline more negatively sloped. This case would be stable were it possible, but it is impossible under the restrictions of the model as can be proved by careful collection of algebraic terms.
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Gersovitz, M. (2013). Mathematical Epidemiology and Welfare Economics. In: Manfredi, P., D'Onofrio, A. (eds) Modeling the Interplay Between Human Behavior and the Spread of Infectious Diseases. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5474-8_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5474-8_12
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