From an epidemiological perspective, the COVID-19 pandemic is a public health crisis. From an economic perspective, it is an externality and a social cost. Strikingly, almost all economic policy to address the infection externality has been formulated within a Pigovian analysis of implicit taxes and subsidies directed by a social planner drawing on social cost-benefit analysis. In this paper we examine the alternative economic methodology of the externality. We seek to understand how an exchange-focused and institutional analysis provides a better understanding of how to minimise social cost. Our Coasean framework allows us to further develop a comparative institutional analysis of the pandemic response.

从流行病学的角度来看，COVID-19大流行是一场公共卫生危机。从经济角度看，这是一种外部性，也是一种社会成本。引人注目的是，几乎所有解决感染外部性的经济政策都是在社会规划者利用社会成本效益分析指导的对隐性税收和补贴的庇古分析中制定的。在本文中，我们研究了外部性的替代经济方法。我们试图了解以交换为中心的制度分析如何更好地理解如何最小化社会成本。我们的科斯框架使我们能够进一步对大流行应对措施进行比较制度分析。