Mass Gatherings Contributed to Early COVID-19 Spread: Evidence from US Sports

Alexander Ahammer, Martin Halla and Mario Lackner

No 2020-03, CDL Aging, Health, Labor working papers from The Christian Doppler (CD) Laboratory Aging, Health, and the Labor Market, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria

Abstract: Social distancing is important to slow the community spread of infectious disease, but it creates enormous economic and social cost. It is thus important to quantify the benefits of different measures. We study the ban of mass gatherings, an intervention with comparably low cost. We exploit exogenous spatial and temporal variation in NBA and NHL games, which arise due to the leagues’ predetermined schedules, and the suspension of the 2019-20 seasons. This allows us to estimate the impact of these mass gatherings on the spread of COVID-19 in affected US counties. One additional mass gathering increased the cumulative number of COVID-19 deaths in affected counties by 11 percent.

Keywords: Social distancing; mass gatherings; Coronavirus Disease 2019; COVID-19. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H12 I10 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 20 pages
Date: 2020-06
Note: English
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

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Working Paper: Mass Gatherings Contributed to Early COVID-19 Mortality: Evidence from US Sports* (2020)
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