IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/ormnsc/v67y2021i10p6350-6357.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Informing the Public About a Pandemic

Author

Listed:
  • Francis de Véricourt

    (European School of Management and Technology, Berlin 10178 , Germany)

  • Huseyin Gurkan

    (European School of Management and Technology, Berlin 10178 , Germany)

  • Shouqiang Wang

    (Naveen Jindal School of Management, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Texas 75080)

Abstract

This paper explores how governments may efficiently inform the public about an epidemic to induce compliance with their confinement measures. Using an information design framework, we find the government has an incentive to either downplay or exaggerate the severity of the epidemic if it heavily prioritizes the economy over population health or vice versa. Importantly, we find that the level of economic inequality in the population has an effect on these distortions. The more unequal the disease’s economic impact on the population, the less the government exaggerates and the more it downplays the severity of the epidemic. When the government weighs the economy and population health sufficiently equally, however, the government should always be fully transparent about the severity of the epidemic.

Suggested Citation

  • Francis de Véricourt & Huseyin Gurkan & Shouqiang Wang, 2021. "Informing the Public About a Pandemic," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(10), pages 6350-6357, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:67:y:2021:i:10:p:6350-6357
    DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2021.4016
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2021.4016
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/mnsc.2021.4016?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wright, Austin L. & Sonin, Konstantin & Driscoll, Jesse & Wilson, Jarnickae, 2020. "Poverty and economic dislocation reduce compliance with COVID-19 shelter-in-place protocols," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 544-554.
    2. John R. Birge & Ozan Candogan & Yiding Feng, 2022. "Controlling Epidemic Spread: Reducing Economic Losses with Targeted Closures," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(5), pages 3175-3195, May.
    3. Nicolas Bottan & Bridget Hoffmann & Diego Vera-Cossio, 2020. "The unequal impact of the coronavirus pandemic: Evidence from seventeen developing countries," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(10), pages 1-10, October.
    4. SCHMEIDLER, David, 1973. "Equilibrium points of nonatomic games," LIDAM Reprints CORE 146, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    5. Xinyan Shi, 2013. "Information disclosure and vaccination externalities," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 9(3), pages 229-243, September.
    6. Saed Alizamir & Francis de Véricourt & Shouqiang Wang, 2020. "Warning Against Recurring Risks: An Information Design Approach," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(10), pages 4612-4629, October.
    7. Sabat, Iryna & Neuman-Böhme, Sebastian & Varghese, Nirosha Elsem & Barros, Pedro Pita & Brouwer, Werner & van Exel, Job & Schreyögg, Jonas & Stargardt, Tom, 2020. "United but divided: Policy responses and people’s perceptions in the EU during the COVID-19 outbreak," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 124(9), pages 909-918.
    8. Elodie Adida & Hamed Mamani & Shima Nassiri, 2017. "Bundled Payment vs. Fee-for-Service: Impact of Payment Scheme on Performance," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(5), pages 1606-1624, May.
    9. James H. Fowler & Seth J. Hill & Remy Levin & Nick Obradovich, 2020. "The effect of stay-at-home orders on COVID-19 cases and fatalities in the United States," Papers 2004.06098, arXiv.org, revised May 2020.
    10. Arda Gitmez & Konstantine Sonin & Austin L. Wright, 2020. "Political Economy of Crisis Response," Working Papers 2020-68, Becker Friedman Institute for Research In Economics.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kılıç, Hakan & Güneş, Evrim Didem, 2024. "Patient adherence in healthcare operations: A narrative review," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    2. Jiang, Christine & Zhang, Xiaori & Hu, Bill, 2024. "Government reporting credibility as immunity: Evidence from a public health event," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    3. Hedlund, Jonas & Hernandez-Chanto, Allan & Oyarzun, Carlos, 2024. "Contagion management through information disclosure," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 218(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Francis de Véricourt, & Huseyin Gurkan, & Shouqiang Wang,, 2020. "Informing the public about a pandemic," ESMT Research Working Papers ESMT-20-03, ESMT European School of Management and Technology.
    2. Francis de Véricourt, & Huseyin Gurkan, & Shouqiang Wang,, 2020. "Informing the public about a pandemic," ESMT Research Working Papers ESMT-20-03, ESMT European School of Management and Technology, revised 11 Feb 2021.
    3. Wright, Austin L. & Sonin, Konstantin & Driscoll, Jesse & Wilson, Jarnickae, 2020. "Poverty and economic dislocation reduce compliance with COVID-19 shelter-in-place protocols," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 544-554.
    4. Maxim Ananyev & Michael Poyker & Yuan Tian, 2021. "The safest time to fly: pandemic response in the era of Fox News," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 34(3), pages 775-802, July.
    5. Bisin, Alberto & Moro, Andrea, 2022. "JUE insight: Learning epidemiology by doing: The empirical implications of a Spatial-SIR model with behavioral responses," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    6. Chernozhukov, Victor & Kasahara, Hiroyuki & Schrimpf, Paul, 2021. "Causal impact of masks, policies, behavior on early covid-19 pandemic in the U.S," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 220(1), pages 23-62.
    7. Painter, Marcus & Qiu, Tian, 2021. "Political beliefs affect compliance with government mandates," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 185(C), pages 688-701.
    8. Milosh, Maria & Painter, Marcus & Sonin, Konstantin & Van Dijcke, David & Wright, Austin L., 2021. "Unmasking partisanship: Polarization undermines public response to collective risk," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 204(C).
    9. Etienne Farvaque & Hira Iqbal & Nicolas Ooghe, 2020. "Health politics? Determinants of US states’ reactions to COVID-19," Post-Print hal-03128875, HAL.
    10. Adam Brzezinski & Valentin Kecht & David Dijcke & Austin L. Wright, 2021. "Science skepticism reduced compliance with COVID-19 shelter-in-place policies in the United States," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 5(11), pages 1519-1527, November.
    11. Camacho, Carmen & Kamihigashi, Takashi & Sağlam, Çağrı, 2018. "Robust comparative statics for non-monotone shocks in large aggregative games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 288-299.
    12. Anindya Ghose & Beibei Li & Meghanath Macha & Chenshuo Sun & Natasha Ying Zhang Foutz, 2020. "Trading Privacy for the Greater Social Good: How Did America React During COVID-19?," Papers 2006.05859, arXiv.org.
    13. Acuña, José & Andersen, Lykke E. & Gonzáles, Luis, 2020. "Datos territoriales para la gestión de la pandemia: el caso del COVID-19 en Bolivia," Revista Latinoamericana de Desarrollo Economico, Carrera de Economía de la Universidad Católica Boliviana (UCB) "San Pablo", issue 34, pages 7-33, November.
    14. Robert M. Anderson & Haosui Duanmu & M. Ali Khan & Metin Uyanik, 2022. "Walrasian equilibrium theory with and without free-disposal: theorems and counterexamples in an infinite-agent context," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 73(2), pages 387-412, April.
    15. Anubhab Gupta & Heng Zhu & Miki Khanh Doan & Aleksandr Michuda & Binoy Majumder, 2021. "Economic Impacts of the COVID−19 Lockdown in a Remittance‐Dependent Region," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 103(2), pages 466-485, March.
    16. Giacomo Aletti & Alessandro Benfenati & Giovanni Naldi, 2021. "Graph, Spectra, Control and Epidemics: An Example with a SEIR Model," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 9(22), pages 1-13, November.
    17. Guerrero-Amezaga, Maria Elena & Humphries, John Eric & Neilson, Christopher A. & Shimberg, Naomi & Ulyssea, Gabriel, 2022. "Small firms and the pandemic: Evidence from Latin America," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 155(C).
    18. Arda Gitmez & Konstantine Sonin & Austin L. Wright, 2020. "Political Economy of Crisis Response," Working Papers 2020-68, Becker Friedman Institute for Research In Economics.
    19. Battiston, Pietro & Gamba, Simona, 2021. "COVID-19: R0 is lower where outbreak is larger," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 125(2), pages 141-147.
    20. Nicola Persico & Petra Todd, 2004. "Using Hit Rate Tests to Test for Racial Bias in Law Enforcement: Vehicle Searches in Wichita," NBER Working Papers 10947, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    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:inm:ormnsc:v:67:y:2021:i:10:p:6350-6357. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.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.