Moritz Kuhn discussion of: Safe choices?

Abstract

The Covid pandemic dominated social life over the past 2 years. It turned social interaction that is a key part of human life into risky behaviour. It thereby affected the relative utility from different consumption goods compared with a non-pandemic world. Those consumption goods that happen in public or in groups (watching a soccer game at the stadium) come in the pandemic with the risk of infection, whereas others that are done at home (watching a soccer game on TV) remain unaffected. As a result, households face a new trade-off for their consumption decisions when they have to decide about consumption with social interaction and the risk of infection. Many governments put regulation in place that restricted this trade off, whereas other governments asked the population to be responsible enough to decide on this risk-return trade off solely based on private costs and gains.