characterize equilibrium, optimal outcomes, static and dynamic externalities, and prove the following: (i) A lockdown generically … arrives deterministically, optimal policy is dis-continuous, featuring a light/strict lockdown when the arrival date exceeds … gains from optimal policy unless the government lacks instruments to stimulate activity after a lockdown. …

We embed a lockdown choice in a simplified epidemiological model and derive formulas for the optimal lockdown intensity … discovery, learning effects in the health care sector, and the severity of output losses due to a lockdown. In our baseline …

We study the problem of a policymaker who aims at taming the spread of an epidemic while minimizing its associated … numerical experiments illustrating the structure of the optimal lockdown policy. In all our experiments the latter is … characterized by three distinct periods: the epidemic is first let freely evolve, then vigorously tamed, and finally a less …