Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/264374 
Year of Publication: 
2022
Series/Report no.: 
ADB Economics Working Paper Series No. 658
Publisher: 
Asian Development Bank (ADB), Manila
Abstract: 
This paper investigates the dynamic impact of social distancing policy on coronavirus disease (COVID-19) infection control, mobility of people, and consumption expenditures in the Republic of Korea. We employ structural and threshold vector autoregressive (VAR) models using big-data-driven mobility data, credit card expenditure, and a social distancing index. We find that the social distancing policy significantly reduces the spread of COVID-19, but there exists a significant, growing trade-off between infection control and economic activity over time. When the level of stringency in social distancing is already high, its marginal effect on mobility is estimated to be smaller than when social distancing stringency is low. Increased vaccination is found to significantly reduce the critical rate while it increases visitors and consumption expenditures. The results also show that the effect of social distancing policy on mobility reduction is strongest among the population of age under 20 and the weakest among the population of age over 60.
Subjects: 
COVID-19
social distancing policy
mobility
vaccination
Republic of Korea
structural VAR
threshold VAR
JEL: 
I18
J68
C32
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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