Research in Economics on COVID-19 posits an economy subject to disease dynamics, which are often seriously misspecified in terms of speed and scale. Using a social planner problem, we show that such misspecifications lead to misguided policy. Erroneously characterizing a relatively slow-moving...

This paper combines a canonical epidemiology model of disease dynamics with government policy of lockdown and testing, and agents' decision to social distance in order to avoid getting infected. The model is calibrated with data on deaths and testing outcomes in the Unites States. It is shown...

Prevention efforts often involve spillovers, positive or negative, on other individuals, but this is neglected by standard models of risk prevention.We analyze strategic interaction between decision makers whose effort affects each other's risk.We characterize response functions and Nash...