Optimal Lockdown in a Commuting Network

Pablo Fajgelbaum, Amit Khandelwal, Wookun Kim, Cristiano Mantovani, Edouard Schaal

NBER Working Paper No. 27441
Issued in June 2020, Revised in November 2020
NBER Program(s):International Trade and Investment

We study optimal dynamic lockdowns against Covid-19 within a commuting network. Our framework integrates canonical spatial epidemiology and trade models, and is applied to cities with varying initial viral spread: Seoul, Daegu and NYC-Metro. Spatial lockdowns achieve substantially smaller income losses than uniform lockdowns. In NYM and Daegu—with large initial shocks—the optimal lockdown restricts inflows to central districts before gradual relaxation, while in Seoul it imposes low temporal but large spatial variation. Actual commuting reductions were too weak in central locations in Daegu and NYM, and too strong across Seoul.

Acknowledgments

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Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w27441