Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/120974 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2015
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 9326
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
Viruses are a major threat to human health, and - given that they spread through social interactions - represent a costly externality. This paper addresses three main issues: i) what are the unintended consequences of economic activity on the spread of infections? ii) how efficient are measures that limit interpersonal contacts? iii) how do we allocate our scarce resources to limit their spread? To answer these questions, we use novel high frequency data from France on the incidence of a number of viral diseases across space, for different age groups, over a period of a quarter of a century. We use quasi-experimental variation to evaluate the importance of policies reducing inter-personal contacts such as school closures or the closure of public transportation networks. While these policies significantly reduce disease prevalence, we find that they are not cost-effective. We find that expansions of transportation networks have significant health costs in increasing the spread of viruses and that propagation rates are pro-cyclically sensitive to economic conditions and increase with inter-regional trade.
Subjects: 
health
epidemics
spatial diffusion
transportation networks
public policy
JEL: 
I12
I15
I18
H51
C23
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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