Emmanuelle Augeraud-Veron
(GREThA)

« The relation between biodiversity loss and frequency of zoonose pandemicrisk is well documented in the literature. In this article we present a model to integrate this phenomenon in the context of a general equilibrium dynamic economic set-up. The occurrence of pandemic episodes is modeled as Poissonian leaps in stochastic economic variables. The planner can intervene in two ways: first (prevention), by preserving a greater quantity of biodiversity, and second (mitigation), through apartial blockage o f economic activity. The policy is evaluated using a social welfare function which takes into account risk aversion, fluctuation aversion, altruism towards future generations and discount of future utility.Biodiver sity conservation is shown to be more relevant for more « forward looking » societies  and societies with a high degree of altruism towards future generations. Societies accepting a large welfare loss to mitigate the pandemics are also  a more prevention, not to have to incur the loss too often. After calibrating the model with COVID-19 pandemic data we compare the mitigation efforts predicted by the model with those of the recent literature and we study the optimal prevention-mitigation policy mix. »