Econ Papers Daily / 期刊论文
疫情中的传染、迁移与资源错配
Contagion, migration, and misallocation in a pandemic
摘要
We study how individuals' migration decisions during a pandemic interact with the spatial allocation of hospital resources, characterizing both the laissez-faire equilibrium and the planner's allocation in closed form. Susceptible individuals leave high-infection cities while infected individuals move toward better-resourced ones, but these private decisions diverge from the planner's along two dimensions. First, the migration of infected agents toward susceptible-rich destinations raises transmission risk, a contagion externality the planner internalizes by restricting such flows. Second, the migration of infected agents toward better-resourced cities relieves hospital congestion at the epicenter, a congestion externality the planner internalizes by encouraging such flows. The two externalities work in opposite directions, and our comparative statics show when each dominates. The framework explains a cross-country pattern that standard misallocation theory cannot: during COVID-19, countries with greater regional dispersion in mortality tended to have lower aggregate mortality. This pattern arises naturally once contagion and endogenous mobility are added to a standard misallocation framework. More broadly, the analysis identifies a setting in which spatial dispersion can raise rather than reduce welfare, reversing the sign of the standard misallocation prescription.
中文摘要
我们研究了疫情期间个体迁移决策如何与医院资源的空间配置相互作用，并以闭式解形式刻画了自由放任均衡与规划者配置。易感个体离开高感染城市，而感染者则向资源更优的城市移动，但这些私人决策在两个方面与规划者的选择产生分歧。首先，感染者向易感人群密集目的地的迁移增加了传播风险，这是一种传染外部性，规划者通过限制此类流动将其内部化。其次，感染者向资源更优城市的迁移缓解了疫情中心的医院拥挤状况，这是一种拥挤外部性，规划者通过鼓励此类流动将其内部化。这两种外部性作用方向相反，我们的比较静态分析揭示了各自占优的条件。该框架解释了一种标准错配理论无法解释的跨国模式：在COVID-19期间，区域死亡率离散度较大的国家往往具有较低的总体死亡率。一旦将传染性和内生流动性纳入标准错配框架，这一模式便自然显现。更广泛而言，分析识别了一种情境，其中空间分散能够提高而非降低福利，从而逆转了标准错配处方的符号。