Daily Covid-19 infected population densities in Italian provinces follow Taylor’s law

Federico Benassi, Alessia Naccarato and Meng Xu

Mathematical Population Studies, 2023, vol. 30, issue 4, 229-248

Abstract: Taylor’s law states that the spatial variance of the population density varies as the power function of the mean population density. This law is tested on daily Covid-19 infection density for five periods between February 25, 2020 and March 15, 2021. The Italian provinces are grouped by geography into three ensembles. A simultaneous-equation model accounts for correlations between the ensembles, between Italian provinces within each ensemble, and for temporal autocorrelations. The selected periods show ensembles with all Taylor’s law slopes below 2 (reflecting State interventions at the national level), or all above 2 (reflecting interventions at the local level), or some ensembles above while others were below. Slope of Taylor’s law and average density trend indicate whether the infection density is highly concentrated in a few provinces (when the slope is greater than 2 with increasing density, and when the slope is less than 2 with decreasing density) or spread evenly among all provinces in an ensemble (when the slope is greater than 2 with decreasing density, and when the slope is less than 2 with increasing density), which allows the government and epidemiologists to design disease control policies for targeted provinces and ensembles in Italy.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/08898480.2022.2155415 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:mpopst:v:30:y:2023:i:4:p:229-248

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/GMPS20

DOI: 10.1080/08898480.2022.2155415

Access Statistics for this article

Mathematical Population Studies is currently edited by Prof. Noel Bonneuil, Annick Lesne, Tomasz Zadlo, Malay Ghosh and Ezio Venturino

More articles in Mathematical Population Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().