The benefits of remoteness: Digital mobility data, regional road infrastructure, and COVID-19 infections

Astrid Krenz and Holger Strulik

No 396, University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics from University of Goettingen, Department of Economics

Abstract: We investigate the regional distribution of the COVID-19 outbreak in Germany. We use a novel digital mobility dataset, that traces the undertaken trips on Easter Sunday 2020 and instrument them with regional accessibility as measured by the regional road infrastructure of Germany's 401 NUTS III regions. We identify a robust negative association between the number of infected cases per capita and accessibility by road infrastructure, measured by the average travel time to the next major urban center. What has been a hinderance for economic performance in good economic times, appears to be a benevolent factor in the COVID-19 pandemic: bad road infrastructure. Using road infrastructure as an instrument for mobility reductions we assess the causal effect of mobility reduction on infections. The study shows that keeping mobility of people low is a main factor to reduce infections. Aggregating over all regions, our results suggest that there would have been about 63,000 infections less on May 5th, 2020, if mobility at the onset of the disease were 10 percent lower.

Keywords: Digital technology; Mobility data; Regional road infrastructure; Germany; COVID-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 R11 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-geo, nep-ict, nep-tre and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/219321/1/1700585576.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The benefits of remoteness – digital mobility data, regional road infrastructure, and COVID-19 infections (2021)
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:zbw:cegedp:396

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics from University of Goettingen, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().