Erik Wengström
Studierektor forskarutbildning, Nationalekonomiska institutionen, Professor
The Individual Welfare Costs of Stay-At-Home Policies
Författare
Summary, in English
This paper reports the results of a choice experiment designed to estimate the private welfare costs of stay-at-home policies during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study is conducted on a large and representative sample of the Swedish population. The results suggest that the welfare cost of a one-month stay-at-home policy, restricting non-working hours away from home, amounts to 9.1 percent of Sweden's monthly GDP. The cost can be interpreted as 29,600 quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), which roughly corresponds to between 3,700 and 8,000 COVID-19 fatalities. Moreover, we find that stricter and longer lockdowns are disproportionately more costly than more lenient ones. This result indicates that strict stay-at-home policies are likely to be cost-effective only if they slow the spread of the disease much more than more lenient ones.
Avdelning/ar
- Nationalekonomiska institutionen
Publiceringsår
2020-05-25
Språk
Engelska
Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie
Working Papers
Issue
2020:9
Fulltext
- Available as PDF - 670 kB
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Dokumenttyp
Working paper
Ämne
- Economics
Nyckelord
- Stay-at-home orders
- welfare effects
- choice experiment
- D62
- I18
Aktiv
Published