Free and perfectly safe but only partially effective vaccines can harm everyone

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Talamas, Eduard; Vohra, Rakesh
• 署名单位: University of Navarra; IESE Business School; University of Pennsylvania
• 刊物名称: GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0899-8256
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2020.05.001
• 发表日期: 2020
• 页码: 277-289
• 关键词: Epidemics; vaccines; Risk compensation; Social structure

摘要

Risk compensation can undermine the ability of partially effective vaccines to curb epidemics: Vaccinated agents may optimally choose to engage in more risky interactions and, as a result, may increase everyone's infection probability. We show that-in contrast to the prediction of standard models-things can be worse than that: Free and perfectly safe but only partially effective vaccines can reduce everyone's welfare, and hence fail to satisfy-in a strong sense-the fundamental principle of first, do no harm. Our main departure from standard economic epidemiological models is that we allow agents to strategically choose their partners, which we show creates strategic complementarities in risky interactions. As a result, the introduction of a partially-effective vaccine can lead to a much denser interaction structure-whose negative welfare effects overwhelm the beneficial direct welfare effects of this intervention. (C) 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.