This paper uses an estimated open economy DSGE model to examine if constant interest forecasts one and two years ahead can be regarded as modest policy interventions during the period 1993Q4-2002Q4. An intervention is here defined to be modest if it does not trigger the agents to revise their...

Vaccination provides indirect benefits to the unvaccinated. Despite its important policy implications, there is little analytical or empirical work to quantify this externality, nor is it incorporated in a number of cost-benefit studies of vaccine programs. We use a standard epidemiological...

Spatial models for spread of an epidemic may be mapped onto bond percolation. We point out that with disorder in the strength of contacts between individuals patchiness in the spread of the epidemic is very likely, and the criterion for epidemic outbreak depends strongly on the disorder because...

In this article, the effect of a change in the distribution of age differences between sexual partners on the dynamics of the HIV epidemic is studied. In a gender and age structured compartmental model, it is shown that if the variance of the distribution is small enough, an increase in this...

The population dynamics underlying the diffusion of ideas hold many qualitative similarities to those involved in the spread of infections. In spite of much suggestive evidence this analogy is hardly ever quantified in useful ways. The standard benefit of modeling epidemics is the ability to...

Small world network models have been effective in capturing the variable behaviour of reported case data of the SARS coronavirus outbreak in Hong Kong during 2003. Simulations of these models have previously been realized using informed “guesses” of the proposed model parameters and tested...

The propagation of model epidemics on a small-world network under the action of immunization is studied. Although the connectivity in this kind of networks is rather uniform, a vaccination strategy focused on the best connected individuals yields a considerable improvement of disease control....

In this article, the effect of a change in the distribution of age differences between sexual partners on the dynamics of the HIV epidemic is studied. In a gender and age structured compartmental model, it is shown that if the variance of the distribution is small enough, an increase in this...