Image of COVID-19 nasal swab
“Covid-19 testing” by Prachatai | CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

In his recently published paper, Incentives, lockdown, and testing: from Thucydides’ analysis to the COVID-19 pandemic, IEOR Assistant Professor Thibaut Mastrolia and his co-authors explore the relationship between people and their government while an epidemic, such as COVID-19, is ongoing. Beginning with Thucydides’ analysis on the citizenry of Athens during the “the sickness” of 430 BCE, and moving into recent stay-at-home mandates and testing policies to reduce COVID-19 transmission rates, Mastrolia’s research uses mathematical models to reveal government tax incentive strategies that can effectively encourage participation in testing and lockdown policies among populations.

Additional authors on the paper are Emma Hubert (Princeton University), Dylan Possamaï (ETH Zurich), and Xavier Warin (EDF and Energy Markets and Finance Laboratory).

Read the Paper

Journal of Mathematical Biology

Learn more about Thibaut Mastrolia here