Mass Gatherings Contributed to Early COVID-19 Mortality: Evidence from US Sports*

Alexander Ahammer, Martin Halla and Mario Lackner

No 2020-13, Economics working papers from Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria

Abstract: Social distancing is important to slow the community spread of infectious disease, but it creates enormous economic and social cost. Thus, it is important to quantify the benefits of different measures. We study the ban of mass gatherings, an intervention with comparably low cost. We exploit exogenous spatial and temporal variation in NBA and NHL games—which arise due to the leagues’ predetermined schedules—and the suspension of the 2019-20 seasons. This allows us to estimate the impact of indoor mass gatherings on COVID-19 mortality in affected US counties. One additional mass gathering increased the cumulative number of COVID-19 deaths in affected counties by 9 percent.

Keywords: Social distancing; mass gatherings; Coronavirus Disease 2019; COVID-19. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H12 I10 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-hea and nep-spo
Note: English
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Mass gatherings contributed to early COVID‐19 mortality: Evidence from US sports (2023)
Working Paper: Mass Gatherings Contributed to Early COVID-19 Spread: Evidence from US Sports (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:jku:econwp:2020-13

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