The Economics Seminar at Ohio University presents William Neilson discussing “The Theory of Strategic Vaccination in a Network” on Jan. 13 at 3 p.m. in the Bentley 124.
Dr. William Neilson
Neilson is Professor of Economics at the University of Tennessee.
Abstract: (William Neilson, Yancheng Xiao) If the potential to spread diseases is governed by a network of how people come into contact with each other, then the network structure becomes important for the efficiency and effectiveness of preventive measures like vaccination programs. We develop a static game-theoretic model to study strategic vaccination in networks with symmetric and asymmetric structures and find three sources of potential inefficiency even when individuals can coordinate with each other before they make decisions. In both of symmetric and asymmetric networks there is a possibility that too few people get vaccinated because they do not consider positive externalities, a result one would expect from the usual public good contribution considerations. However, in asymmetric networks the existence of multiple equilibria may lead to two unusual types of ineffi ciencies: the right number but wrong sets of people get vaccinated and too many people get vaccinated while the one who should get vaccinated does not, so that reallocating vaccinations to different people would improve social welfare. All of these three types of
inefficiencies may happen when people cannot coordinate such that they have to choose a probability of getting vaccinated to achieve a mixed strategy equilibrium. The results highlight the scope of the challenges a vaccination program must overcome to achieve social optimality.
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