Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP10842
Authors: Jrme Adda
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.
Keywords: health; public policy; spatial diffusion; transportational networks
JEL Codes: C23; H51; I12; I15; I18
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| school closures (J65) | influenza disease incidence (I12) |
| school closures (J65) | influenza disease incidence among children (J13) |
| school closures (J65) | influenza disease incidence among adults (I12) |
| school closures (J65) | acute diarrhea incidence among the elderly (J14) |
| public transportation strikes (L91) | transmission rates of flu-like illnesses among adults (I12) |
| public transportation strikes (L91) | transmission rates of flu-like illnesses among the elderly (J14) |
| opening of new high-speed rail lines (L92) | transmission rates for flu-like illnesses (F42) |
| opening of new high-speed rail lines (L92) | transmission rates for acute diarrhea (Y10) |
| economic conditions during booms (E32) | disease spread (I12) |
| interregional trade (F15) | disease transmission (I12) |