Academic

Contagious diseases are passed on when contagious and susceptible individuals meet. This paper introduces and explores a new matching game, characterized by individuals meeting pairwise, possibly unwittingly passing along a disease in a contagion-like fashion. We assume that individuals can expend costly effort to avoid acquiring it. In this population game, efforts are strategic substitutes: The harder other individuals try, the more lax one can be. We solve for the unique Nash equilibrium when individuals are heterogeneous. We then estimate this structural model and show that it improves on the explanation of the data without endogenous behaviour. (joint work with Elena Quercioli, and Lones Smith)