Behavioral Responses to Health Risks and Policies during Epidemics

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted shortcomings of standard epidemiological models in accurately predicting the spread of the virus. This, in turn, undermined the ability to conduct reliable policy analysis, e.g., cost-benefit analyses of school closures, mask wearing, etc. The goal of this project is to generate empirical knowledge about human behavior in the face of epidemic risk and policies, and use that knowledge to develop improved behavioral and mathematical epidemiological models that can be used for policy analysis in the face of novel epidemics.