Airborne disease transmission during indoor gatherings over multiple time scales: Modeling framework and policy implications.

Indoor superspreading events are significant drivers of transmission of respiratory diseases. In this work, we study the dynamics of airborne transmission in consecutive meetings of individuals in enclosed spaces. In contrast to the usual pairwise-interaction models of infection where effective contacts transmit the disease, we focus on group interactions where individuals with distinct health states meet simultaneously.

Localized prosocial preferences, public goods, and common-pool resources.

The presence of prosocial preferences is thought to reduce significantly the difficulty of solving societal collective action problems such as providing public goods (or reducing public bads). However, prosociality is often limited to members of an in-group. We present a general theoretical model where society is split into subgroups and people care more about the welfare of others in their own subgroup than they do about those in out-groups.

Political polarization.

Failures of government policies often provoke opposite reactions from citizens; some call for a reversal of the policy, whereas others favor its continuation in stronger form. We offer an explanation of such polarization, based on a natural bimodality of preferences in political and economic contexts and consistent with Bayesian rationality.