On SARS Type Economic Effects During Infectious Disease Outbreaks
Infectious disease outbreaks can exact a high human and economic cost through illness and death. But, as with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in East Asia in 2003, or the plague outbreak in Surat, India, in 1994, they can also create sever...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2012
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2008/01/8921763/sars-type-economic-effects-during-infectious-disease-outbreaks http://hdl.handle.net/10986/6440 |
| Summary: | Infectious disease outbreaks can exact a
high human and economic cost through illness and death.
But, as with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in
East Asia in 2003, or the plague outbreak in Surat, India,
in 1994, they can also create severe economic disruptions
even when there is, ultimately, relatively little illness or
death. Such disruptions are commonly the result of
uncoordinated and panicky efforts by individuals to avoid
becoming infected, of preventive activity. This paper places
these "SARS type" effects in the context of
research on economic epidemiology, in which behavioral
responses to disease risk have both economic and
epidemiological consequences. The paper looks in particular
at how people form subjective probability judgments about
disease risk. Public opinion surveys during the SARS
outbreak provide suggestive evidence that people did indeed
at times hold excessively high perceptions of the risk of
becoming infected, or, if infected, of dying from the
disease. The paper discusses research in behavioral
economics and the theory of information cascades that may
shed light on the origin of such biases. The authors
consider whether public information strategies can help
reduce unwarranted panic. A preliminary question is why
governments often seem to have strong incentives to conceal
information about infectious disease outbreaks. The paper
reviews recent game-theoretic analysis that clarifies
government incentives. An important finding is that
government incentives to conceal decline the more numerous
are non-official sources of information about a possible
disease outbreak. The findings suggest that honesty may
indeed be the best public policy under modern conditions of
easy mass global communications. |
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