Nash epidemics

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Schnyder, Simon K., Molina, John J., Yamamoto, Ryoichi, Turner, Matthew S.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Schnyder, Simon K.
Molina, John J.
Yamamoto, Ryoichi
Turner, Matthew S.
author_facet Schnyder, Simon K.
Molina, John J.
Yamamoto, Ryoichi
Turner, Matthew S.
contents Faced with a dangerous epidemic humans will spontaneously social distance to reduce their risk of infection at a socio-economic cost. Compartmentalised epidemic models have been extended to include this endogenous decision making: Individuals choose their behaviour to optimise a utility function, self-consistently giving rise to population behaviour. Here we study the properties of the resulting Nash equilibria, in which no member of the population can gain an advantage by unilaterally adopting different behaviour. We leverage a new analytic solution to obtain, (1) a simple relationship between rational social distancing behaviour and the current number of infections; (2) new scaling results for how the infection peak and number of total cases depend on the cost of contracting the disease; (3) characteristic infection costs that divide regimes of strong and weak behavioural response and depend only on the basic reproduction number of the disease; (4) a closed form expression for the value of the utility. We discuss how these analytic results provide a deep and intuitive understanding into the disease dynamics, useful for both individuals and policymakers. In particular the relationship between social distancing and infections represents a heuristic that could be communicated to the population to encourage, or "bootstrap", rational behaviour.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_04366
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Nash epidemics
Schnyder, Simon K.
Molina, John J.
Yamamoto, Ryoichi
Turner, Matthew S.
Theoretical Economics
Systems and Control
Optimization and Control
Physics and Society
Faced with a dangerous epidemic humans will spontaneously social distance to reduce their risk of infection at a socio-economic cost. Compartmentalised epidemic models have been extended to include this endogenous decision making: Individuals choose their behaviour to optimise a utility function, self-consistently giving rise to population behaviour. Here we study the properties of the resulting Nash equilibria, in which no member of the population can gain an advantage by unilaterally adopting different behaviour. We leverage a new analytic solution to obtain, (1) a simple relationship between rational social distancing behaviour and the current number of infections; (2) new scaling results for how the infection peak and number of total cases depend on the cost of contracting the disease; (3) characteristic infection costs that divide regimes of strong and weak behavioural response and depend only on the basic reproduction number of the disease; (4) a closed form expression for the value of the utility. We discuss how these analytic results provide a deep and intuitive understanding into the disease dynamics, useful for both individuals and policymakers. In particular the relationship between social distancing and infections represents a heuristic that could be communicated to the population to encourage, or "bootstrap", rational behaviour.
title Nash epidemics
topic Theoretical Economics
Systems and Control
Optimization and Control
Physics and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.04366