Working Paper No. 1340

The Individual Welfare Costs of Stay-at-Home Policies

Published: May 26, 2020Pages: 42Keywords: Stay-at-home orders; welfare effects; choice experimentJEL-codes: D62; I18

The Individual Welfare Costs of Stay-at-Home Policies Ola Andersson, Pol Campos-Mercade, Fredrik Carlsson, Florian Schneider and Erik Wengström

This paper reports the results of a choice experiment designed to estimate the private welfare costs of stay-at-home policies during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study is conducted on a large and representative sample of the Swedish population.

The results suggest that the welfare cost of a one-month stay-at-home policy, restricting non-working hours away from home, amounts to 9.1 percent of Sweden's monthly GDP. The cost can be interpreted as 29,600 quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), which roughly corresponds to between 3,700 and 8,000 COVID-19 fatalities.

Moreover, we find that stricter and longer lockdowns are disproportionately more costly than more lenient ones. This result indicates that strict stay-at-home policies are likely to be cost-effective only if they slow the spread of the disease much more than more lenient ones.

Reference:
Andersson, Ola, Pol Campos-Mercade, Fredrik Carlsson, Florian Schneider and Erik Wengström (2020), "The Individual Welfare Costs of Stay-at-Home Policies". IFN Working Paper No. 1340. Stockholm: Research Institute of Industrial Economics.

Ola Andersson

Contact

Mob: +46 70 432 2450
ola.andersson@ifn.se

Interdisciplinary European Studies

The European Union and the Return of the Nation State

9783030350048_200x_the-european-union-and-the-return-of-the-nation-state.jpg

This book explores the complex and ever-changing relationship between the European Union and its member states. The recent surge in tension in this relationship has been prompted by the actions of some member state governments as they question fundamental EU values and principles and refuse to implement common decisions seemingly on the basis of narrowly defined national interests.

About the book

Events

Seminars organized by IFN

To present ongoing research informal brown-bag seminars are held on Mondays at 11:30 am. This is an opportunity for IFN researchers to test ideas and results.

Academically oriented seminars are most of the time held on Wednesdays at 10 am. At these events researchers from IFN and other institutions present their research.

In addition, IFN organizes seminars open to the public. Topics for these are derived from the IFN research.