Face Masks, Public Policies and Slowing the Spread of COVID-19: Evidence from Canada

Alexander Karaivanov, Shih En Lu, Hitoshi Shigeoka, Cong Chen and Stephanie Pamplona

No 27891, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We estimate the impact of mask mandates and other non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) on COVID-19 case growth in Canada, including regulations on businesses and gatherings, school closures, travel and self-isolation, and long-term care homes. We partially account for behavioral responses using Google mobility data. Our identification approach exploits variation in the timing of indoor face mask mandates staggered over two months in the 34 public health regions in Ontario, Canada's most populous province. We find that, in the first few weeks after implementation, mask mandates are associated with a reduction of 25 percent in the weekly number of new COVID-19 cases. Additional analysis with province-level data provides corroborating evidence. Counterfactual policy simulations suggest that mandating indoor masks nationwide in early July could have reduced the weekly number of new cases in Canada by 25 to 40 percent in mid-August, which translates into 700 to 1,100 fewer cases per week.

JEL-codes: C23 I12 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
Note: AG EH PE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Published as Karaivanov, Alexander & Lu, Shih En & Shigeoka, Hitoshi & Chen, Cong & Pamplona, Stephanie, 2021. "Face masks, public policies and slowing the spread of COVID-19: Evidence from Canada," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w27891.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Face masks, public policies and slowing the spread of COVID-19: Evidence from Canada (2021)
Working Paper: Face Masks, Public Policies and Slowing the Spread of COVID-19: Evidence from Canada (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:nbr:nberwo:27891

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w27891

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().