ArticlePloS one2021
The social cost of contacts: Theory and evidence for the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany.
Article in PloS one, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 30 citations in OpenAlex.
- The theory of epidemics with altruism.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- A novel, scenario-based approach to comparing non-pharmaceutical intervention strategies across nations.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2024Article
- Article
- Mitigating the outbreak of an infectious disease over its life cycle: A diffusion-based approach.PloS one · 2023Article
- Effects of media on preventive behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic.Humanities & social sciences communications · 2023Article
- Prosociality predicts individual behavior and collective outcomes in the COVID-19 pandemic.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2022Article
- Article
- Measuring voluntary and policy-induced social distancing behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Prosociality predicts health behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic.Journal of public economics · 2021Article
- Moral Suasion and the Private Provision of Public Goods: Evidence from the COVID-19 Pandemic.Environmental & resource economics · 2020Article
- Suggestions for a Covid-19 Post-Pandemic Research Agenda in Environmental Economics.Environmental & resource economics · 2020Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Building on the epidemiological SIR model, we present an economic model with heterogeneous individuals deriving utility from social contacts creating infection risks. Focusing on social distancing of individuals susceptible to an infection we theoretically characterize the gap between private and social cost of contacts. Our main contribution is to quantify this gap by calibrating the model with unique survey data from Germany on social distancing and impure altruism from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The optimal policy is to drastically reduce contacts at the beginning to almost eradicate the epidemic and keep them at levels that contain the pandemic at a low prevalence level. We find that also in laissez faire, private protection efforts by forward-looking, risk averse individuals would have stabilized the epidemic, but at a much higher prevalence of infection than optimal. Altruistic motives increase individual protection efforts, but a substantial gap to the social optimum remains.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.