Title
Informing the Public About a Pandemic
Abstract
This paper explores how governments may efficiently inform the public about an epidemic to induce compliance with their confinement measures. Using an information design framework, we find the government has an incentive to either downplay or exaggerate the severity of the epidemic if it heavily prioritizes the economy over population health or vice versa. Importantly, we find that the level of economic inequality in the population has an effect on these distortions. The more unequal the disease's economic impact on the population, the less the government exaggerates and the more it downplays the severity of the epidemic. When the government weighs the economy and population health sufficiently equally, however, the government should always be fully transparent about the severity of the epidemic.
Year
DOI
Venue
2021
10.1287/mnsc.2021.4016
MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
Keywords
DocType
Volume
public health, epidemic control, information design, strategic behavior
Journal
67
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
10
0025-1909
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
0
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Francis de Véricourt101.01
Huseyin Gurkan200.34
Shouqiang Wang301.69