IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/joevec/v36y2026i2d10.1007_s00191-026-00965-6.html

Infectious diseases, social distancing compliance, and social interactions

Author

Listed:
  • Simone Marsiglio

    (University of Pisa, Department of Economics and Management)

  • Tatyana Perevalova

    (University of Pisa, Department of Economics and Management
    University of Agder, School of Business and Law)

Abstract

We analyze the role of social interactions in driving the effectiveness of social distancing to mitigate the economic consequences of infectious diseases. Individuals choose whether to comply with social distancing measures by accounting for health and social considerations, determining the dynamic evolution of disease prevalence. We show that the feedback effects between health and social conditions imply that the economy may converge to a disease-free or endemic situation, giving rise to a variety of alternative scenarios, in which unique or multiple stable equilibria exist, monotonic or non-monotonic trajectories occur, cyclical behavior or path-dependency arise. Moreover, by extending the analysis to a stochastic setup to account for the role of uncertainty, we show that the predictions of a deterministic analysis may not be enough to perform robust policy analysis, as the stochastic outcome may largely differ from the deterministic one.

Suggested Citation

  • Simone Marsiglio & Tatyana Perevalova, 2026. "Infectious diseases, social distancing compliance, and social interactions," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 36(2), pages 1-30, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:joevec:v:36:y:2026:i:2:d:10.1007_s00191-026-00965-6
    DOI: 10.1007/s00191-026-00965-6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00191-026-00965-6
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s00191-026-00965-6?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • C60 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - General
    • D70 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - General
    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General

    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:spr:joevec:v:36:y:2026:i:2:d:10.1007_s00191-026-00965-6. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.