Health Externalities and Policy: The Role of Social Preferences

Autor: Laura Alfaro, Ester Faia, Nora Lamersdorf, Farzad Saidi
Rok vydání: 2022
Předmět:
Zdroj: Management Science. 68:6751-6761
ISSN: 1526-5501
0025-1909
DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2022.4461
Popis: Social preferences facilitate the internalization of health externalities, for example, by reducing mobility during a pandemic. We test this hypothesis using mobility data from 258 cities worldwide alongside experimentally validated measures of social preferences. Controlling for time-varying heterogeneity that could arise at the level at which mitigation policies are implemented, we find that they matter less in regions that are more altruistic, patient, or exhibit less negative reciprocity. In those regions, mobility falls ahead of lockdowns, and remains low after the lifting thereof. Our results elucidate the importance, independent of the cultural context, of social preferences in fostering cooperative behavior. This paper was accepted by Yan Chen, behavioral economics and decision analysis.
Databáze: OpenAIRE