We propose an economic framework for determining the optimal allocation of a scarce supply of vaccines that become gradually available during a public health crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Agents differ in observable and unobservable characteristics, and the designer maximizes a social-welfare function over all feasible mechanisms—accounting for agents’ characteristics, as well as their endogenous behavior in the face of the pandemic. The framework emphasizes the role of externalities and incorporates equity as well as efficiency concerns. Our results provide an economic justification for providing vaccines immediately and for free to some groups of agents, while at the same time showing that a carefully constructed pricing mechanism can improve outcomes by screening for individuals with the highest private and social benefits of receiving the vaccine. The solution casts light on the classic question of whether prices or priorities should be used to allocate scarce public resources under externalities and equity concerns.

中文翻译：

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疫苗优先排序的经济框架

我们提出了一个经济框架，用于确定在公共卫生危机（例如 COVID-19 大流行）期间逐渐可用的稀缺疫苗的最佳分配。代理人在可观察和不可观察的特征上有所不同，设计者在所有可行机制上最大化社会福利功能——考虑到代理人的特征，以及他们在大流行病面前的内生行为。该框架强调外部性的作用，并纳入公平和效率问题。我们的结果为立即免费向某些代理人群体提供疫苗提供了经济理由，同时表明，精心构建的定价机制可以通过筛选接种疫苗后私人和社会效益最高的个人来改善结果。该解决方案阐明了在外部性和公平问题下是否应使用价格或优先级来分配稀缺公共资源的经典问题。