Wave after wave: determining the temporal lag in Covid-19 infections and deaths using spatial panel data from Germany

Manuela Fritz ()
Additional contact information
Manuela Fritz: University of Passau

Journal of Spatial Econometrics, 2022, vol. 3, issue 1, 1-30

Abstract: Abstract The Covid-19 pandemic requires a continuous evaluation of whether current policies and measures taken are sufficient to protect vulnerable populations. One quantitative indicator of policy effectiveness and pandemic severity is the case fatality ratio, which relies on the lagged number of infections relative to current deaths. The appropriate length of the time lag to be used, however, is heavily debated. In this article, I contribute to this debate by determining the temporal lag between the number of infections and deaths using daily panel data from Germany’s 16 federal states. To account for the dynamic spatial spread of the virus, I rely on different spatial econometric models that allow not only to consider the infections in a given state but also spillover effects through infections in neighboring federal states. My results suggest that a wave of infections within a given state is followed by increasing death rates 12 days later. Yet, if the number of infections in other states rises, the number of death cases within that given state subsequently decreases. The results of this article contribute to the better understanding of the dynamic spatio-temporal spread of the virus in Germany, which is indispensable for the design of effective policy responses.

Keywords: Covid-19; Spatio-temporal models; Time lag effects; Spatial spillovers; Spatial Durbin model; Germany (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 C23 I10 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s43071-022-00027-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:jospat:v:3:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1007_s43071-022-00027-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer.com/journal/43071

DOI: 10.1007/s43071-022-00027-6

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Spatial Econometrics is currently edited by Giuseppe Arbia, Lung Fei Lee and James LeSage

More articles in Journal of Spatial Econometrics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().