Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/246313 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
Working Paper No. 2023
Publisher: 
Johannes Kepler University of Linz, Department of Economics, Linz
Abstract: 
To fight the spread of COVID-19, many countries implemented unprecedented social distancing policies. This is the first paper that uses an event-study approach to examine the effects of the German social distancing policies on (a) individual behavior and (b) the spread of the epidemic. Combining administrative health data and cell phone data, we find that the policies, first, heavily reduced citizens' mobility and, second, strongly contained the epidemic. In comparison to a benchmark without social distancing, within three weeks, the policies avoided 84% of the potential COVID-19 cases (point estimate: 499.3K) and 66% of the potential fatalities (5.4K).
Subjects: 
COVID-19
social distancing policies
policy evaluation
mobility behavior
JEL: 
I18
H12
I12
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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