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Discussion Paper Details

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Title: Social capital and the spread of Covid-19: Insights from European countries

Author(s): Alina Bartscher, Sebastian Seitz, Sebastian Siegloch, Michaela Slotwinski and Nils Wehrhöfer

Publication Date: June 2020

Keyword(s): collective action, COVID-19, Europe, health costs and social capital

Programme Area(s): Labour Economics and Public Economics

Abstract: We explore the role of social capital in the first wave of the recent Covid-19 pandemic in independent analyses for Austria, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland. Exploiting within-country variation, we show that a one standard deviation increase in social capital leads to between 14% and 40% fewer Covid-19 cases per capita accumulated from mid-March until end of June, as well as between 7% and 16% fewer excess deaths per capita. Our results have important implications for the design of local containment policies in possible future waves of the pandemic.

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Bibliographic Reference

Bartscher, A, Seitz, S, Siegloch, S, Slotwinski, M and Wehrhöfer, N. 2020. 'Social capital and the spread of Covid-19: Insights from European countries'. London, Centre for Economic Policy Research. https://cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=14866