Do We Learn From Errors? The Economic Impact of Differentiated Policy Restrictions in Italy

Francesco Scotti, Andrea Flori, Giovanni Bonaccorsi and Fabio Pammolli

International Regional Science Review, 2023, vol. 46, issue 5-6, 613-648

Abstract: This paper investigates the economic impact of the three tiers risk framework implemented in Italy against the COVID-19 pandemic during the Autumn of 2020. Exploiting a large-scale dataset encompassing daily credit card transactions mediated by a large Italian bank, we estimate a set of panel event study models to disentangle the impact of restrictions with low, medium and high stringency levels in terms of consumption reduction. We show that space-time differentiated policies tend to produce stronger welfare losses for progressively more stringent restrictions in specific sectors targeted by these policies such as Retail and Restaurants. However, when we compare provinces implementing the same level of policy stringency, we show that territories with higher income per capita and larger concentration of manufacturing and service activities experience both significantly worse economic and epidemiological performances. Overall, our results suggest that policy makers should properly account for local socio-economic characteristics when designing tailored restrictions entailing an equal and homogeneous impact across territories.

Keywords: economic consumption; COVID-19 pandemic; differentiated policy restrictions; sectors; socio-economic characteristics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:inrsre:v:46:y:2023:i:5-6:p:613-648

DOI: 10.1177/01600176231168027

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