TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Bartscher, Alina Kristin
AU  - Seitz, Sebastian
AU  - Siegloch, Sebastian
AU  - Slotwinski, Michaela
AU  - Wehrhöfer, Nils
        TI  - Social Capital and the Spread of COVID-19: Insights from European Countries
        PY  - 2020/May/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 13310
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp13310
        AB  - 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.
        KW  - collective action
KW  - social capital
KW  - COVID-19
KW  - health costs
KW  - Europe
        ER  -