Social distancing laws cause only small losses of economic activity during the COVID-19 pandemic in Scandinavia
Social distancing laws cause only small losses of economic activity during the COVID-19 pandemic in Scandinavia
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DOI：
10.1073/pnas.2010068117
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发表时间：
2020-08-25
影响因子：
11.1
通讯作者：
Johannesen, Niels
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Sheridan, Adam;Andersen, Asger Lau;Johannesen, Niels
本文使用斯堪的纳维亚一家大型银行的实时交易数据，估计社交距离法律对2019冠状病毒病（COVID-19）大流行中消费者支出的影响。这项分析利用了一个自然实验来解开病毒和旨在遏制病毒的法律的影响：丹麦和瑞典类似地暴露在流行病中，但只有丹麦对社会和经济活动施加了重大限制。我们估计，瑞典的总支出下降了约25%（95% CI：24至26%），由于关闭，又下降了4个百分点（95% CI：3至5个百分点）。在丹麦。这表明，大部分经济萎缩是由病毒本身引起的，并且无论社交距离法律如何都会发生。估计数中的年龄梯度表明，社交距离加强了病毒引起的低健康风险个人支出下降，但通过降低病毒在社会中的总体流行率，削弱了高风险个人的支出。
This paper uses real-time transaction data from a large bank in Scandinavia to estimate the effect of social distancing laws on consumer spending in the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The analysis exploits a natural experiment to disentangle the effects of the virus and the laws aiming to contain it: Denmark and Sweden were similarly exposed to the pandemic but only Denmark imposed significant restrictions on social and economic activities. We estimate that aggregate spending dropped by around 25% (95% CI: 24 to 26%) in Sweden and, as a result of the shutdown, by 4 additional percentage points (95% CI: 3 to 5 percentage points [p.p.]) in Denmark. This suggests that most of the economic contraction is caused by the virus itself and occurs regardless of social distancing laws. The age gradient in the estimates suggests that social distancing reinforces the virus-induced drop in spending for low-health-risk individuals but attenuates it for high-risk individuals by lowering the overall prevalence of the virus in the society.