Upcoming Events
Mason Online Pandemic MODeling Forum - Co-Pierre Georg
May 7, 2021, 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
The last speaker for this semester will be Co-Pierre Georg, Associate Professor with AIFMRM, the African Institute of Financial Markets and Risk Management at the University of Cape Town. Dr. Georg will be presenting "Social Learning in a Network Model of Covid-19" a paper he co-authored with Allan Davids, Gideon du Rand, Joeri Schasfoort, and Tina Koziol.
Please note: This talk is scheduled for 11:00 a.m. (EDT) on Friday, May 7. WebEx details follow.
Also, please note this will be the final seminar of the spring semester. A new seminar series will start up again with the beginning of the fall 2021 semester and will focus on post-pandemic topics.
We hope you can join us on Friday, May 7 at 11:00 a.m. (EDT) and look forward to having you return in the fall semester.
Have a great summer.
Online Forum Link | Meeting # (access code): 120 618 9154 Meeting password: kPPs3JPne58 Join by video system: Dial 1206189154@gmu.webex.com Or dial 173.243.2.68 and enter the meeting # Join by phone: +1-415-655-0003 US Toll +1-202-860-2110 United States Toll (Wash., D.C.) Access code: 120 618 9154 |
Date | Friday, May 7, 2021 |
Time | 11:00 am - 12:30 pm EDT (UTC-4:00) |
Title | Social Learning in a Network Model of Covid-19 |
Authors | Co-Pierre Georg, Allan Davids, Gideon du Rand, Joeri Schasfoort, and Tina Koziol |
Abstract | This paper studies the effects of social learning on the transmission of Covid-19 in a network model. We calibrate our model to detailed data for Cape Town, South Africa and show that the inclusion of social learning improves the prediction of excess fatalities, reducing the best-fit squared difference from $19.34$ to $11.40$. The inclusion of social learning both flattens and shortens the curves for infections, hospitalizations, and excess fatalities. This result is qualitatively different from {\em flattening the curve} by reducing the contact rate or transmission probability through non-pharmaceutical interventions. While social learning reduces infections, this alone is not sufficient to curb the spread of the virus because learning is slower than the disease spreads. We use our model to study the efficacy of different vaccination strategies and find that a risk-based vaccination strategy--vaccinating vulnerable groups first--leads to a 72\% reduction in fatalities and 5\% increase in total infections compared to a random-order benchmark. By contrast, using a contact-based vaccination strategy reduces infections by only 0.9\% but results in 42\% more fatalities relative to the benchmark. |
Speakers Bios | Co-Pierre Georg is an Associate Professor at the University of Cape Town and holds the South African Reserve Bank Chair in Financial Stability Studies. He also has a part-time position as Research Economist at Deutsche Bundesbank. His research interests focus on systemic risk and financial interconnectedness with a particular interest on the nexus of financial innovation and financial stability. He obtained his PhD from the University of Jena in 2011 and has published both in finance and interdisciplinary journals. Co-Pierre’s research has received awards from the European Central Bank, the SAFE Center of Excellence at Goethe University, the Volkswagen Foundation, and the Institut Louis Bachelier. He has been a consultant at various central banks and held visiting positions at MIT, Oxford, Princeton, and Columbia University. Aside from being a as Research Associate at the Oxford Martin School for the 21st Century, Co-Pierre is a Research Associate at the Imperial College Center for Global Finance and Technology, as well as a Research Affiliate at the Columbia University Center for Global Legal Transformation. |