The objective of the project is to perform a theoretical study of the individual dynamic demand for vaccination, the aggregate disease implications of this demand, and the effects of public intervention on disease related behavior. Several of the results of the study have been partly established concerning the effect that prevalence of disease has on vaccine demand, the self-limiting character of epidemics that result from this private demand, and the Giffen good character of immunity in the sense that a vaccine price subsidy may decrease immunity. Furthermore, implications regarding the crowding out effect public vaccinations have on the private demand for vaccines are analyzed, as well as the relative health care expenditures on prevention versus treatment implied by public intervention. The conjectured results concern the cyclic disease occurrence under rational demand for vaccination, the effects of the demand for immunity on the age structure of a disease, and the normative welfare effects of vaccination and research on cure developments. The understanding of the vaccine related behavior the study will gain insight into is important for understanding the difficulty of existing public vaccine programs in eliminating vaccine preventable diseases.
