The economic impacts of the UK's Eat Out to Help Out scheme

Nicolas Gonzalez Pampillon, Gonzalo Nunez Chaim and Henry Overman
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Gonzalo Nunez-Chaim

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: We evaluate the economic impacts of the UK's Eat Out to Help Out (EOTHO) scheme on the food service sector. EOTHO subsidised the cost of eating out, with a 50% discount Mondays to Wednesdays in August 2020. We exploit the spatial variation in take-up using a continuous difference-in-differences approach and an instrumental variables strategy. We measure the effect on footfall using mobility data from Google and on employment using job posts from Indeed. Our estimates indicate that a one standard deviation increase in exposure to the EOTHO scheme increased footfall in retail & recreation by 2%-5%, and job posts in the food preparation & service industry by 6%-8%. These effects are transitory, and we do not find evidence of large spillover benefits to non-recreational activities or other sectors.

Keywords: consumption subsidy; Covid-19; instrumental variables; footfall; job posts; coronavirus (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C30 H29 H32 J23 L83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 45 pages
Date: 2022-07-28
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/117979/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The economic impacts of the UK's eat out to help out scheme (2024)
Working Paper: The economic impacts of the UK’s Eat Out to Help Out scheme (2024)
Working Paper: The economic impacts of the UK's eat out to help out scheme (2022)
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:ehl:lserod:117979

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().