Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/216637 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 8241
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
We use anonymized and aggregated data from Facebook to show that areas with stronger social ties to two early COVID-19 "hotspots" (Westchester County, NY, in the U.S. and Lodi province in Italy) generally have more confirmed COVID-19 cases as of March 30, 2020. These relationships hold after controlling for geographic distance to the hotspots as well as for the income and population density of the regions. These results suggest that data from online social networks may prove useful to epidemiologists and others hoping to forecast the spread of communicable diseases such as COVID-19.
Subjects: 
social connectedness
COVID-19
coronavirus
communicable disease
JEL: 
C60
I10
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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