RAPID: Joint Epidemiological and Macroeconomic Outcomes from Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic

摘要美国经济于二零二零年三月首次停摆，导致COVID-19死亡率达到峰值并缓慢下降，但经济付出了巨大代价，二零二零年四月的失业率达到大萧条以来的最高水平。现在迫切的问题是如何重新开放经济，让工人重返工作岗位，同时控制疾病的传播。虽然直觉可能会提出大致的方向，但最终需要对拟议重新开放计划的影响进行定量了解，以指导安全和持久的重新开放。该项目将提供一个粒度，集成的建模系统，能够提供内部一致的流行病学和经济结果的联合路径。这样做需要在足够详细的程度上合并流行病学模型和部门经济模型，以提供详细的非药物干预措施（NPI）的定量评估，例如部门一级的重新开放战略，检测和检疫，关闭学校以及在工作场所使用口罩和手套，这对经济和社会产生了直接的实质性影响。在技术层面上，该研究将把基于年龄的流行病学SEIRD（易感、暴露、传染、死亡）模型与美国经济的非线性投入产出模型相结合。关闭和重新开放的路径是在细粒度的部门一级指定的，其中部门的特点是工人的年龄分布不同，在工作场所的接近程度和接触程度不同。NPI会影响感染、隔离和死亡，这些因素沿着NPI带来的直接劳动力供应和其他冲击，都会影响经济模型。SEIRD模型的年龄结构允许检查详细的年龄特定和活动特定的非盈利机构。研究将把现有的非线性投入产出结构扩展到劳动力市场摩擦，以及应对疫情的劳动力供给和消费需求的内生性转变。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

AbstractThe initial shutdown of the US economy in March 2020 resulted in a peak and a slow decline in the death rate from COVID-19, but at a tremendous cost to the economy, with the April 2020 seeing the highest rate of unemployment since the Great Depression. Urgent questions now concern how to reopen the economy in a way that gets workers back to work while controlling the spread of the disease. While intuition might suggest general directions, ultimately a quantitative understanding of the effects of proposed reopening plans is needed to guide a safe and durable reopening. This project will provide a granular, integrated modeling system capable of providing internally consistent joint paths for epidemiological and economic outcomes. Doing so entails merging epidemiological models and sectoral economic models at a sufficient level of detail to provide quantitative assessments of detailed non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), such as sectoral-level reopening strategies, testing and quarantine, school closings, and the use of masks and gloves at the workplace, which has immediate substantial broader impacts for the economy and the society. At a technical level, the research will merge an age-based epidemiological SEIRD (Susceptible, Exposed, Infectious, Recovered and Dead) model with a nonlinear input-output model of the US economy. Closure and reopening paths are specified at a granular sector level, where sectors are characterized by different age distributions of workers and different degrees of proximity and contacts at the workplace. NPIs affect infections, quarantine, and deaths, which, along with direct labor supply and other shocks from the NPIs, feed into the economic model. The age structure of the SEIRD model allows examination of detailed age-specific and activity-specific NPIs. The research will extend the existing nonlinear input-output structure to labor market frictions and to endogenous shifts in labor supply and consumption demand in response to the epidemic. The result will be a quantitative framework for assessing the joint path of the epidemic and the economy at a level of granularity currently not available.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.