Economics of Epidemics

How an infectious-disease epidemic progresses depends on human behavior, which in turn depends on people’s incentives. The field of economic epidemiology sheds light on this feedback between behavior and infectious-disease spread, but has long been stuck in the shadows. After a flurry of seminal work in the 1990s motivated by the global AIDS pandemic, the profession’s interest in the field seemed to dwindle and most of the best theoretical work by economists found its home in biology journals. As a result, when the Covid-19 pandemic struck in early 2020, most economists were completely unaware of recent progress in the field.

That all changed as hundreds of economists from labor, finance, market design, and other sub-fields put aside what they were doing and devoted themselves to contributing to our understanding of the economics of epidemics. What resulted was a blossoming of economic epidemiology, building off the foundations that had been laid over the previous three decades. The volume of high-quality work was so great that Covid Economics, an online repository of vetted working papers of the Centre for Economic Policy Research launched in April 2020, published twelve issues in May alone. Avinash Dixit, a renowned economic theorist, wittily remarked, “If any pandemic spread faster than Covid-19, it is that of research about Covid-19.” Several of these Covid-inspired papers found their way into well-regarded economics journals, but many more outstanding contributions remain unpublished and could be lost to the profession as their authors return to focus on pre-pandemic topics.

To promote the continuing creative growth of the field of economic epidemiology, the Review of Economic Design is soliciting manuscripts for a special issue on the economics of epidemics. Of particular interest are papers providing contributions that generate novel economic insights and/or that expand the scope of economic-epidemiological modeling.

We expect the Special Issue to focus primarily on disease-causing pathogens, but papers on the economic epidemiology of other sorts of infectants (e.g., ideas, fake news) are also welcome. Moreover, we are open to heterodox modeling approaches that depart from the mold set by the early pioneers of the 1990s—especially if these new approaches allow new questions, new economic forces, or richer disease models to be meaningfully explored.

Papers must be submitted through the electronic submission system , choosing “Special Issue on Economics of Epidemics” from the drop-down list during submission. Please mention in the cover letter as well that the submission is meant for the special issue. Submissions accepted before the completion of the issue will be published ‘online first,’ and they will be fully citable with the DOI.