Pandemic perception and regulation effectiveness: Evidence from the COVID-19

Luisa Loiacono (), Riccardo Puglisi, Leonzio Rizzo () and Riccardo Secomandi ()
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Luisa Loiacono: Università di Parma e Università di Ferrara
Leonzio Rizzo: Università di Ferrara e Institut d'Economia Barcelona
Riccardo Secomandi: Università di Ferrara

Working papers from Società Italiana di Economia Pubblica

Abstract: The spread of COVID-19 led countries around the world to adopt lockdown measures of varying stringency to restrict movement of people. However, the effectiveness of these measures on mobility has been markedly different. Employing a difference-in-differences design and a set of robustness checks, we analyse the effectiveness of movement restrictions across different countries. We disentangle the role of regulation (stringency measures) from the role of people’s perception about the spread of COVID-19. We proxy the COVID-19 perception by using Google Trends data on the term “Covid”. We find that lockdown measures have a higher impact on mobility the more people perceive the severity of COVID-19 pandemic. This finding is driven by countries with low level of trust in institutions.

Keywords: mobility; lockdown measures; COVID-19; stringency index; perception; public health; public policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D7 E7 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-big and nep-hea
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