Countries worldwide have implemented lockdown measures to contain the covid-19 pandemic. After more than three months … while keeping the epidemic in check. Here I use basic economic principles to shed light on the key tradeoffs. A central … message is that there is no "health vs. economics" dichotomy. Rather, some degree of lockdown is typically optimal in crisis …

. Calibrating the model to the US Covid-19 pandemic reveals an 80% reduction in death toll due to voluntary actions and the lockdown … implemented in the US. The optimal lockdown, however, is more stringent than what was implemented in the US. Moreover, the social … testing, showing its impact on reduced deaths, lower economic costs and laxer lockdown. We use the framework to provide …

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 …