%0 Report
        %A Bartscher, Alina Kristin
%A Seitz, Sebastian
%A Siegloch, Sebastian
%A Slotwinski, Michaela
%A Wehrhöfer, Nils
        %T Social Capital and the Spread of COVID-19: Insights from European Countries
        %D 2020
        %8 2020 May
        %I Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        %C Bonn
        %7 IZA Discussion Paper
        %N 13310
        %U https://www.iza.org/publications/dp13310
        %X We explore the role of social capital in the spread of the recent Covid-19 pandemic in independent analyses for Austria, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. Exploiting within-country variation, we show that a one standard deviation increase in social capital leads to 12% and 32% fewer Covid-19 cases per capita accumulated from mid-March until mid-May. Using Italy as a case study, we find that high-social-capital areas exhibit lower excess mortality and a decline in mobility. Our results have important implications for the design of local containment policies in future waves of the pandemic.
        %K collective action
%K social capital
%K COVID-19
%K health costs
%K Europe