Strategically Rational Risk Taking by Age in COVID-19, and the Heterogeneous Agent Behavioral SIR Model

Given the dramatic age variation in COVID death rates, we create a heterogeneous agent version of Behavioral SIR contagion model Engle et al. (2020). The Bayes Nash equilibrium our infection avoidance game yields simple new log-linear relationship between case fatality rate (CFR) and incidence: Everyone knows that everyone optimizes vigilance both for prevalence their CFR. We explain 2020 CDC incidence data USA north-east terms CFR to age-specific Massachusetts. Our is statistically significant: A 10% higher reduces by about 1%.