Compulsory face mask policies do not affect community mobility in Germany

Roxanne Kovacs (), Maurice Dunaiski () and Janne Tukiainen
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Roxanne Kovacs: London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Maurice Dunaiski: London School of Economics and Political Science

No 136, Discussion Papers from Aboa Centre for Economics

Abstract: There is currently a heated debate about making face masks compulsory in public spaces to contain COVID-19. A key concern is that such policies could lead to risk compensating behaviour and thereby undermine efforts to maintain social distancing and reduce mobility. We provide first evidence on the impact of compulsory face mask policies on community mobility. We exploit the staggered implementation of policies by German states and measure community mobility using geo-located smartphone data. We find no evidence suggesting that compulsory masking policies affect community mobility in Germany. We can rule out even small increases larger than 0.03 standard deviations.

Keywords: COVID-19; face masks; social distancing; community mobility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D9 H12 I12 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 50
Date: 2020-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Compulsory face mask policies do not affect community mobility in Germany (2020)
Working Paper: Compulsory face mask policies do not affect community mobility in Germany (2020)
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