In this paper, we investigate the nature of rational expectations equilibria for economic epidemiological models. Unlike mathematical epidemiological models, economic epidemiological models can produce regions of indeterminacy or instability around the endemic steady state. We consider SI, SIS,...

SARS struck Taiwan in 2003, causing a national crisis. Many people feared that SARS would spread through the health care system, and outpatient visits fell by more than 30% in the course of a few weeks. We examine how both public information and the behavior and opinions of peers contributed to...

Although most countries state that fighting social intolerance against persons with HIV is part of their national HIV strategy, the impact of reducing intolerance on risky sexual behavior is largely unknown. In this paper, we estimate the effect of social intolerance against HIV+ persons on...

Recent outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza in Asia, Europe, and Africa have caused severe impacts on the poultry sector through bird mortality and culling, as well as resulting trade restrictions and negative demand shocks. Although poultry producers play a major role in preventing...

This paper fully characterizes the optimal control of a recurrent infectious disease through the use of (non-vaccine) prevention and treatment. The dynamic system may admit multiple steady states and the optimal policy may be path dependent. We find that an optimal path cannot end at a point...

This paper considers a model of infectious disease, such as swine flu, in which privately costly treatment confers immunity on recovered individuals. It is shown that under decentralized decision making, infected individuals ignore the externality that their treatment has on susceptible...