Economic Impact of Targeted Government Responses to COVID-19: Evidence from the First Large-scale Cluster in Seoul

Jinwook Shin (), Seonghoon Kim () and Kanghyock Koh ()
Additional contact information
Jinwook Shin: Seoul National University
Kanghyock Koh: Korea University

No 13575, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We estimate the economic impact of South Korea's targeted responses to the first large-scale COVID-19 cluster in Seoul. We find that foot traffic and retail sales decreased only within a 300 meter radius of the cluster and recovered to its pre-outbreak level after four weeks. The reductions appear to be driven by temporary business closures rather than the risk avoidance behavior of the citizens. Our results imply that less intense, but more targeted COVID-19 interventions, such as pin-pointed, temporary closures of businesses, can be a low-cost alternative after lifting strict social distancing measures.

Keywords: retail sales; foot traffic; risk avoidance; information disclosure; pandemic; COVID-19; cell phone signal data; card transaction data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E2 H12 I12 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2020-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac and nep-sea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published - published in: Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 2021, 192, 199-221

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp13575.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Economic Impact of Targeted Government Responses to COVID-19: Evidence from the First Large-scale Cluster in Seoul (2020)
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:iza:izadps:dp13575

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().