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The Cost of Privacy: Welfare Effects of the Disclosure of COVID-19 Cases

David Argente1; Chang‐Tai Hsieh2; Munseob Lee3

1 Pennsylvania State University · 2 University of Chicago · 3 University of California San Diego

The Review of Economics and Statistics 2022

Abstract South Korea publicly disclosed detailed location information of individuals who tested positive for COVID-19. We quantify the effect of public disclosure on the transmission of the virus and economic losses in Seoul. The change in commuting patterns due to public disclosure lowers the number of cases by 60,000 and the number of deaths by 2,000 in Seoul over two years. Compared to a city-wide lockdown that results in the same number of cases over two years as the disclosure scenario, the economic cost of such a lockdown is almost four times higher.

DOI
10.1162/rest_a_01095
Volume
104 (1)
Pages
176-186
Language
en
Export
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