Early non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) significantly reduced the death toll of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, there are vast differences in how quickly governments implemented NPIs. In this paper, we analyze the role of public attention, measured as the share of daily Google searches in a...

Trust in the health care system requires being confident that sufficient and appropriate treatments will be provided if needed. The COVID-19 public health crisis is a significant, global, and (mostly) simultaneous test of the behavioral implications arising from this trust. We explore whether...

Early non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) significantly reduced the death toll of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, there are vast differences in how quickly governments implemented NPIs. In this paper, we analyze the role of public attention, measured as the share of daily Google searches in a...

Much has been revealed recently regarding the relative unpreparedness of Public Health Authorities and their governments in many countries. We show that a lack of preparedness for the Covid-19 pandemic resulted from four major types of shortcomings. First, even when there were problems noted in...

We develop an epidemic model to explain and predict the dynamics of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and to assess the economic costs of lockdown scenarios. The standard epidemic three-variable model, SIR (Susceptible, Infected and Removed) is extended into a five-variable model SCARE: Susceptible, Carrier,...