Moral Preferences over Taboo Trade-offs in the Time of Coronavirus

Abstract

Covid-19 brought to the forefront of the political agenda the trade-off between health and economic activities. Leveraging theoretical and empirical tools from economics, we estimate moral preferences over fatalities and jobs losses due to the pandemic in Italy, the UK and the US. The exercise is based on a choice experiment spanning these preferences in a wide space of possible combinations of the two outcomes. This exercise allows us to estimate how people respond to the severity of the economic and/or health toll. On average, about 95% of the weight in the participants' utility function goes to health, and respondents’ stable traits (such as political orientation or risk aversion) influence attitudes more than their personal experiences with the consequences of the pandemic. Most importantly, policy responses look misaligned with estimated preferences. Italy adopted more stringent containment measures, while Italian respondents display a relatively weaker pro-health attitude. We stress-test this result and find it is robust: it does not stem either from a reaction to the policies adopted or from differences in fundamentals, such as labor market conditions and health costs.Classification: Social Sciences - Economic Sciences