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

2020年3月美国经济最初的停摆导致COVID-19死亡率达到峰值并缓慢下降，但经济付出了巨大代价，2020年4月失业率达到大萧条以来的最高水平。现在的紧迫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。虽然直觉可能会给出大致的方向，但最终需要对拟议的重新开放计划的效果进行定量了解，以指导安全持久的重新开放。该项目将提供一个精细的综合建模系统，能够为流行病学和经济结果提供内部一致的联合路径。这样做需要在足够详细的层面上合并流行病学模型和部门经济模型，以便对详细的非药物干预措施（npi）进行定量评估，例如部门一级的重新开放战略、检测和检疫、学校关闭以及在工作场所使用口罩和手套，这些措施对经济和社会产生直接的、实质性的、更广泛的影响。在技术层面上，这项研究将把基于年龄的流行病学SEIRD（易感、暴露、感染、恢复和死亡）模型与美国经济的非线性投入产出模型结合起来。关闭和重新开放的路径是在细粒度的部门层面上指定的，其中部门的特点是工人的年龄分布不同，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，再加上npi带来的直接劳动力供应和其他冲击，这些都会影响到经济模型。SEIRD模型的年龄结构允许对特定年龄和特定活动的npi进行详细的检查。研究将现有的非线性投入产出结构扩展到劳动力市场摩擦和应对疫情的劳动力供给和消费需求的内生转移。其结果将是一个定量框架，用于评估疫情和经济的共同路径，其粒度水平目前尚无法获得。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，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.