The COVID-19 pandemic poses an enormous challenge to economic and health policy. In response to the outbreak, many countries have implemented many drastic measures to contain the spread of the virus. These actions were often accompanied by an unprecedented fiscal and monetary stimulus. The pandemic has sparked a need for research about best economic and health policy responses to such events.
The project aims to partially fill this gap. We will develop a model that simultaneously takes into account macroeconomic and epidemic developments. This model will then be used to answer questions about the optimal economic and health policy response to be undertaken during an epidemic. We will consider measures such as quarantine, monetary and fiscal policy and the closure of selected sectors of the economy, among others.
The optimality assessment will take into account the impact of instruments on the development of the epidemic, its social consequences and economic impact.