We develop a simple dynamic economic model of epidemic transmission designed to be consistent with widely used biological models of the transmission of epidemics, while incorporating economic benefits and costs as well. Our main finding is that if the technology for tracking infected individuals is sufficiently good, targeted testing and isolation policies deliver large welfare gains relative to optimal policies when these tools are not available. Much of this welfare gain comes from isolating infected individuals rather than testing them. When the tracking technology is not very good, the gains from targeted testing and isolation are small. The message of our analysis is that the returns to improving tracking technologies are very large.

我们开发了一个简单的流行病传播动态经济模型，旨在与广泛使用的流行病传播生物学模型保持一致，同时结合经济效益和成本。我们的主要发现是，如果跟踪受感染者的技术足够好，那么当这些工具不可用时，有针对性的测试和隔离政策相对于最佳政策会带来巨大的福利收益。大部分福利收益来自隔离感染者而不是测试他们。当跟踪技术不是很好时，针对性测试和隔离的收益很小。我们的分析表明，改进跟踪技术的回报非常大。