Economic geography of contagion: A study on Covid-19 outbreak in India
Tanika Chakraborty and
Anirban Mukherjee
No 1028, GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO)
Abstract:
We propose a regional inequality-based mechanism to explain the heterogeneity in the spread of Covid-19 and test it using data from India. We argue that an area characterized by coreperiphery economic structure creates regional inequality in which the periphery remains dependent on the core for the supply of jobs, goods and services. Hence, areas arranged in coreperiphery structure induce greater degree of mobility which in turn ends up at a higher infection rate than the more homogeneously developed areas at the time of pandemic. Using nightlights data to measure regional inequality in the degree of economic activity, we find evidence in support of our hypothesis. Further, we find that regions with higher nightlight inequality also experience higher spread of Covid-19 only when lockdown measures have been relaxed and movement of goods and services are near normal. Using mobility data, we provide direct evidence in support of our proposed mechanism; that the positive relationship between regional inequality and Covid-19 infection is driven by mobility. Our findings imply that policy responses to contain Covid-19 contagion needs to be heterogeneous across India where the priority areas can be chosen ex-ante based on inequality in economic activity.
Keywords: Covid-19; contagion; core-periphery; nightlight; mobility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I15 I18 R1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/249201/1/GLO-DP-1028.pdf (application/pdf)
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:zbw:glodps:1028
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().