This paper reexamines the design of the optimal lockdown strategy by paying attention to its robustness to the postulated social welfare criterion. We first characterize optimal lockdown under utilitarianism, and we show that this social criterion can, under some conditions, imply a COVID-19...

Argentina’s initial social policy response to Covid-19 focused on protecting employment, wages and basic living conditions. Key policies included cash transfers and food programs for vulnerable families, wage subsidies for private sector workers and subsidized loans for firms and self-employed...

Social security subsidies in Korea were introduced in 2012 to reduce the coverage gap in social security. Despite the large fiscal cost, however, the subsidies have only a small effect on the social security coverage: for every 1,000 workers and their employers who are subsidized under the...

A well-established result in the literature is that Social Security tends to reduce steady state welfare in a standard life cycle model. However, less is known about the historical effects of the program on agents who were alive when the program was adopted. In a computational life cycle model...

“Antipoverty” programs come in many varieties, ranging from multifaceted, complex programs to more simple cash transfers. Articulating and understanding the root problem motivating government and nongovernmental organization intervention are critical for choosing among many antipoverty...