论文标题
包含大流行的经济成本
The Economic Costs of Containing a Pandemic
论文作者
论文摘要
自1918年西班牙流感大流行以来（第一次世界大战期间），冠状病毒病（Covid-19）造成了世界上最严重的社会和经济损失之一。它导致了巨大的经济和社会成本，例如在某个地区感染的传播导致的死亡增加。这是因为国家和地方政府施加的公共法规不可避免地涉及对经济活动水平的故意抑制。鉴于经济活动与预防流行之间的这种权衡，政府应执行公共干预措施，以最大程度地减少大流行的社会和经济损失。关于由此产生的经济损失的一个主要问题是，它对社会的某些阶层不等。这就提出了一个重要的问题，即如何在整个社会中平均分享这种经济损失。同时，通过公共债务有一些对经济补偿的反感，这很可能会增加未来的经济负担。但是，正如保罗·萨缪尔森（Paul Samuelson）曾经说过的那样，无论是由于公共债务还是其他原因，大部分负担只能由现代而不是子孙后代承担。
The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has caused one of the most serious social and economic losses to countries around the world since the Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918 (during World War I). It has resulted in enormous economic as well as social costs, such as increased deaths from the spread of infection in a region. This is because public regulations imposed by national and local governments to deter the spread of infection inevitably involves a deliberate suppression of the level of economic activity. Given this trade-off between economic activity and epidemic prevention, governments should execute public interventions to minimize social and economic losses from the pandemic. A major problem regarding the resultant economic losses is that it unequally impacts certain strata of the society. This raises an important question on how such economic losses should be shared equally across the society. At the same time, there is some antipathy towards economic compensation by means of public debt, which is likely to increase economic burden in the future. However, as Paul Samuelson once argued, much of the burden, whether due to public debt or otherwise, can only be borne by the present generation, and not by future generations.
