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Discussion Paper Details

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Title: The Hammer and the Dance: Equilibrium and Optimal Policy during a Pandemic Crisis

Author(s): Tiziana Assenza, Fabrice Collard, Martial Dupaigne, Patrick F�ve, Christian Hellwig, Sumudu Kankanamge and Nicolas Werquin

Publication Date: May 2020

Keyword(s): optimal policy and pandemic crisis

Programme Area(s): Macroeconomics and Growth and Monetary Economics and Fluctuations

Abstract: We develop a comprehensive framework for analyzing optimal economic policy during a pandemic crisis in a dynamic economic model that trades off pandemic-induced mortality costs against the adverse economic impact of policy interventions. We use the comparison between the planner problem and the dynamic decentralized equilibrium to highlight the margins of policy intervention and describe optimal policy actions. As our main conclusion, we provide a strong and novel economic justification for the current approach to dealing with the pandemic, which is different from the existing health policy rationales. This justification is based on a simple economic concept, the shadow price of infection risks, which succinctly captures the static and dynamic trade-offs and externalities between economic prosperity and mortality risk as the pandemic unfolds.

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Bibliographic Reference

Assenza, T, Collard, F, Dupaigne, M, F�ve, P, Hellwig, C, Kankanamge, S and Werquin, N. 2020. 'The Hammer and the Dance: Equilibrium and Optimal Policy during a Pandemic Crisis'. London, Centre for Economic Policy Research. https://cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=14731