This project developed, estimated, and simulated a cutting-edge model of the health and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and policy responses to it. The model had four original features:

First, it allowed for two-way interactions between infections and economic outcomes. These interactions were important because, even though the COVID-19 pandemic was fundamentally a matter of public health, it was essential to account for how the pandemic and policy responses affected the economy and how, in turn, the economic impacts affected health, including mental health.

Second, it built policies into a model that accounted for geosocial spread because the SARS-CoV-2 virus spread through contact with others, and policy decisions in one area affected the rest of the country.

Third, it allowed for incidence rates to be measured only through imperfect proxies, which was particularly important for modeling the prevalence of the virus early in the pandemic in the U.S. as well as in many parts of the world for the foreseeable future.

Lastly, the model accounted for disparate impacts across demographic groups, which was critical given that the pandemic had dramatically different effects on different demographic groups (e.g., by age, gender, race, ethnicity, and living arrangements).