IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jpbect/v27y2025i3ne70033.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Vaccine‐Preventable Diseases and Individual Behavior: Deterministic vs Stochastic Outcomes

Author

Listed:
  • Simone Marsiglio
  • Marco Tolotti

Abstract

We analyze the determinants of individual vaccination decisions and their implications on the aggregate immunization coverage and disease prevalence. We show that the relation between key socio‐health‐economic and epidemiological parameters determines which of the several alternative outcomes may arise (unique and multiple stable equilibria, monotonic and fluctuating trajectories, chaotic dynamics, and path dependency). By comparing the deterministic dynamics with their stochastic counterpart, we also show that the deterministic approximation typically employed in economic epidemiology may lead to misleading conclusions about the true stochastic outcome because of the metastable properties of the stochastic system. Public policy, by affecting socio‐health‐economic parameters, may play a fundamental role in ruling out some undesired outcomes and promoting eradication.

Suggested Citation

  • Simone Marsiglio & Marco Tolotti, 2025. "Vaccine‐Preventable Diseases and Individual Behavior: Deterministic vs Stochastic Outcomes," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 27(3), June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jpbect:v:27:y:2025:i:3:n:e70033
    DOI: 10.1111/jpet.70033
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/jpet.70033
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/jpet.70033?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jpbect:v:27:y:2025:i:3:n:e70033. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/apettea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.