Fatalism, beliefs, and behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic
本摘要源自该文的 NBER 工作论文版（2020），正式发表版可能有调整。
Little is known about how people's beliefs concerning the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) influence their behavior.To shed light on this, we conduct an online experiment (n = 3,610) with US and UK residents.Participants are randomly allocated to a control group or to one of two treatment groups.The treatment groups are shown upperor lower-bound expert estimates of the infectiousness of the virus.We present three main empirical findings.First, individuals dramatically overestimate the dangerousness and infectiousness of COVID-19 relative to expert opinion.Second, providing people with expert information partially corrects their beliefs about the virus.Third, the more infectious people believe that COVID-19 is, the less willing they are to take protective measures, a finding we dub the "fatalism effect".We develop a formal model that can explain the fatalism effect and discuss its implications for optimal policy during the pandemic.