Research Seminar of International Laboratory for Macroeconomic Analysis: Hubert Kempf «Living with Covid-19: Optimal lockdown policies»

Dear Colleagues,

International Laboratory for Macroeconomic Analysis invite everyone to join our research seminar on the 18th of  March 2021 (Thursday) at 04:00 PM (Moscow).

Speaker: Hubert Kempf

Theme: «Living with Covid-19: Optimal lockdown policies»

Abstract:

We study optimal lockdown decisions taken by a policymaker facing a pandemic affecting its society which is modelled according to the standard SIR deterministic model of a pandemic. The policymaker wants to trade-off between the economic costs of lockdown and the mortality record of the pandemic which depends on the extent of lockdown. The policy instrument is the degre of strictness of lockdown which affects the dynamics of the pandemic through the control of social distancing and interactions. We study the SIR model in four configurations: no intervention, an active lockdown policy, a variant including hospital capacity constraints and a variant including the finding and administration of a vaccine at a future date. We highlight the impact of the timing of action, depending on cross-derivatives in the infection dynamic equation between the lockdown decision, the date of decision and the date of termination of the pandemic. We show that in the presence of hospital capacity constraint, there is a large intermediate range of "values of life" for which the optimal lockdown policy consists in exactly saturating the hospital capacity constraint.

Working language: English

Link: https://zoom.us/j/8915494425

ID: 891 549 4425

Looking forward to see you.