We examine the net benefits of social distancing to slow the spread of COVID-19 in USA. Social distancing saves lives but imposes large costs on society due to reduced economic activity. We use epidemiological and economic forecasting to perform a rapid benefit–cost analysis of controlling the COVID-19 outbreak. Assuming that social distancing measures can substantially reduce contacts among individuals, we find net benefits of about $5.2 trillion in our benchmark case. We examine the magnitude of the critical parameters that might imply negative net benefits, including the value of statistical life and the discount rate. A key unknown factor is the speed of economic recovery with and without social distancing measures in place. A series of robustness checks also highlight the key role of the value of mortality risk reductions and discounting in the analysis and point to a need for effective economic stimulus when the outbreak has passed.

Considerable efforts have been made to provide cow-calf producers withinformation to help them make informed decisions about adding value tocalves. Despite demonstrated market incentives to retain calves, manyproducers still sell right after weaning. We postulate this observedbehavior is related to producer risk aversion. Our study concludes riskaversion is an important factor affecting calf retention as the mostrisk-averse producers have more than a 60% probability of selling calves atweaning and the most risk tolerant have less than a 20% probability ofselling at weaning.