Footnote:
Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments February 11, 2022 erstellt
Description:
To contain or slow the spread of infectious diseases, mandatory isolations are common policy measures that can be applied uniformly to the population (lockdown) or targeted at potential virus carriers (quarantine). It is generally suggested that quarantine is a superior substitute to lockdown. However, in this research we show that targeted isolation may yield unintended consequences, thanks to the strategic response of voluntary social distancing. On the one hand, more quarantine can backfire and increase the aggregate health cost by inducing less self isolation, despite the decrease in the infection probability for each exposed person. On the other hand, targeting can unexpectedly save the total isolation cost by reducing the incentive for social distancing. Nevertheless, the counteracting effect of social distancing can lead to polarized quarantine by serving as a buffer to facilitate the tradeoff between the isolation cost and public health. Moreover, either lockdown or quarantine can be the favorable option, depending on the composition of infectious versus susceptible individuals, endogenous social distancing, and the use of welfare criterion. Importantly, targeting per se need not be more effective in mitigating disease transmission that is a bilateral process, particularly when the capacity of mandatory isolation is limited