Infectious disease control and its economic gains in a pandemic: the case of South Korea

Youngjae Lee, Junho Jang and SungJu Song

Economic Research-Ekonomska Istraživanja, 2023, vol. 36, issue 2, 2134904

Abstract: We investigate the role of the infectious disease control (IDC) system in curbing the spread of infectious disease and preventing economic damage during the COVID-19 pandemic. To this end, we propose incorporating a clustering analysis into the synthetic control method. This contributes to constructing a homogeneous donor pool, which is necessary for an unbiased treatment effect estimator. South Korea’s effective IDC system, the so-called K-Quarantine, is estimated to have reduced the number of disease infections and to have prevented a 3.6% loss of GDP and a 0.3%p rise in the unemployment rate in South Korea in 2020. These results are robust in an alternative reduced-form regression analysis under various specifications.

Date: 2023
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DOI: 10.1080/1331677X.2022.2134904

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