Optimal Lockdown and Social Welfare
(2020) , 22 pages
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- Abstract
- This paper reexamines the design of the optimal lockdown strategy by paying attention to its robustness to the postulated social welfare cri- terion. We first characterize optimal lockdown under utilitarianism, and we show that this social criterion can, under some conditions, imply a COVID-19 variant of Parfit's (1984) Repugnant Conclusion: for any non- maximal lockdown saving lives at the cost of reducing average utility at a given period, there exists always a stricter lockdown, which further reduces average utility, but leads to a larger aggregate welfare. The optimal lock- down under utilitarianism is also shown to deteriorate the situation of the worst-off, against Hammond Equity. In order to do justice to Hammond Equity, we characterize optimal lockdown under the ex post egalitarian criterion, which gives absolute priority to the worst-off ex post. Under general conditions, the ex post egalitarian optimum involves a zero lock- down. Varying between zero and its maximal level, the optimal lockdown policy is not robust to the postulated ethical criterion.
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Citations
Pestieau, P., & Ponthiere, G. (2020). Optimal Lockdown and Social Welfare (CORE Discussion Paper 2020/32). https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/117644