IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/jgu/wpaper/2016.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Face Masks Considerably Reduce Covid-19 Cases in Germany

Author

Listed:
  • Timo Mitze

    (University of Southern Denmark)

  • Reinhold Kosfeld

    (University of Kassel)

  • Johannes Rode

    (Technical University (TU) of Darmstadt)

  • Klaus Wälde

    (Johannes Gutenberg University)

Abstract

We use the synthetic control method to analyze the effect of face masks on the spread of Covid-19 in Germany. Our identification approach exploits regional variation in the point in time when face masks became compulsory. Depending on the region we analyse, we find that face masks reduced the cumulative number of registered Covid-19 cases between 2.3% and 13% over a period of 10 days after they became compulsory. Assessing the credibility of the various estimates, we conclude that face masks reduce the daily growth rate of reported infections by around 40%.

Suggested Citation

  • Timo Mitze & Reinhold Kosfeld & Johannes Rode & Klaus Wälde, 2020. "Face Masks Considerably Reduce Covid-19 Cases in Germany," Working Papers 2016, Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
    • Handle: RePEc:jgu:wpaper:2016
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://download.uni-mainz.de/RePEc/pdf/Discussion_Paper_2016.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2020
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mitze, Timo & Kosfeld, Reinhold & Rode, Johannes & Wälde, Klaus, 2020. "Face masks considerably reduce COVID-19 cases in Germany," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 124130, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
    2. Mitze, Timo & Kosfeld, Reinhold & Rode, Johannes & Wälde, Klaus, 2020. "Face masks considerably reduce COVID-19 cases in Germany," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 124587, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
    3. Mitze, Timo & Kosfeld, Reinhold & Rode, Johannes & Wälde, Klaus, 2020. "Face Masks Considerably Reduce COVID-19 Cases in Germany: A Synthetic Control Method Approach," IZA Discussion Papers 13319, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Sebastian Galiani & Brian Quistorff, 2017. "The synth runner package: Utilities to automate synthetic control estimation using synth," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 17(4), pages 834-849, December.
    5. Donsimoni Jean Roch & Glawion René & Plachter Bodo & Wälde Klaus, 2020. "Projecting the spread of COVID-19 for Germany," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 21(2), pages 181-216, June.
    6. Noémi Kreif & Richard Grieve & Dominik Hangartner & Alex James Turner & Silviya Nikolova & Matt Sutton, 2016. "Examination of the Synthetic Control Method for Evaluating Health Policies with Multiple Treated Units," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(12), pages 1514-1528, December.
    7. Jean Roch Donsimoni & René Glawion & Bodo Plachter & Constantin Weiser & Klaus Wälde, 2020. "Should contact bans be lifted in Germany?," Working Papers 2008, Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
    8. Hu, Luojia & Kaestner, Robert & Mazumder, Bhashkar & Miller, Sarah & Wong, Ashley, 2018. "The effect of the affordable care act Medicaid expansions on financial wellbeing," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 99-112.
    9. Andrew I. Friedson & Drew McNichols & Joseph J. Sabia & Dhaval Dave, 2020. "Did California’s Shelter-in-Place Order Work? Early Coronavirus-Related Public Health Effects," NBER Working Papers 26992, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Jean Roch Donsimoni & René Glawion & Bodo Plachter & Constantin Weiser & Klaus Wälde, 2020. "Should Contact Bans Be Lifted in Germany? A Quantitative Prediction of Its Effects," CESifo Working Paper Series 8242, CESifo.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mitze, Timo & Kosfeld, Reinhold & Rode, Johannes & Wälde, Klaus, 2020. "Face Masks Considerably Reduce COVID-19 Cases in Germany: A Synthetic Control Method Approach," IZA Discussion Papers 13319, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Martin Huber & Henrika Langen, 2020. "Timing matters: the impact of response measures on COVID-19-related hospitalization and death rates in Germany and Switzerland," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, Springer;Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics, vol. 156(1), pages 1-19, December.
    3. Roy Cerqueti & Raffaella Coppier & Alessandro Girardi & Marco Ventura, 2022. "The sooner the better: lives saved by the lockdown during the COVID-19 outbreak. The case of Italy," The Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 25(1), pages 46-70.
    4. Klaus Wälde, 2020. "How to remove the testing bias in CoV-2 statistics," Working Papers 2021, Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
    5. Callaway, Brantly & Li, Tong, 2023. "Policy evaluation during a pandemic," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 236(1).
    6. Benjamin Born & Alexander M Dietrich & Gernot J Müller, 2021. "The lockdown effect: A counterfactual for Sweden," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(4), pages 1-13, April.
    7. Léa BOU SLEIMAN & Germain GAUTHIER, 2020. "COVID-19: Reduced forms have gone viral, but what do they tell us?," Working Papers 2020-32, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics, revised 18 Jan 2021.
    8. Augusto Cerqua & Roberta Di Stefano, 2022. "When did coronavirus arrive in Europe?," Statistical Methods & Applications, Springer;Società Italiana di Statistica, vol. 31(1), pages 181-195, March.
    9. Demidova, Olga, 2021. "Methods of spatial econometrics and evaluation of government programs effectiveness," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 64, pages 107-134.
    10. Austin L. Wright & Geet Chawla & Luke Chen & Anthony Farmer, 2020. "Tracking Mask Mandates during the COVID-19 Pandemic," Working Papers 2020-104, Becker Friedman Institute for Research In Economics.
    11. Balázs Égert & Yvan Guillemette & Murtin Fabrice & David Turner, 2021. "Walking the Tightrope: Avoiding a Lockdown While Containing the Virus," CESifo Forum, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 22(03), pages 34-40, May.
    12. Yating Chuang & John Chung-En Liu, 2020. "Who wears a mask? Gender differences in risk behaviors in the COVID-19 early days in Taiwan," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 40(4), pages 2619-2627.
    13. Zhen Zhu & Enzo Weber & Till Strohsal & Duaa Serhan, 2020. "Sustainable Border Control Policy in the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Math Modeling Study," Papers 2008.13561, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2021.
    14. Bonander, Carl & Ekman, Mats & Jakobsson, Niklas, 2022. "Vaccination nudges: A study of pre-booked COVID-19 vaccinations in Sweden," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 309(C).
    15. Florian Dorn & Sahamoddin Khailaie & Marc Stoeckli & Sebastian C. Binder & Tanmay Mitra & Berit Lange & Stefan Lautenbacher & Andreas Peichl & Patrizio Vanella & Timo Wollmershäuser & Clemens Fuest & , 2023. "The common interests of health protection and the economy: evidence from scenario calculations of COVID-19 containment policies," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 24(1), pages 67-74, February.
    16. Zhang, Yue-Jun & Cheng, Hao-Sen, 2021. "The impact mechanism of the ETS on CO2 emissions from the service sector: Evidence from Beijing and Shanghai," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 173(C).
    17. David Turner & Balázs Égert & Yvan Guillemette & Jarmila Botev, 2021. "The tortoise and the hare: The race between vaccine rollout and new COVID variants," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 1672, OECD Publishing.
    18. Seres, Gyula & Balleyer, Anna & Cerutti, Nicola & Friedrichsen, Jana & Süer, Müge, 2021. "Face mask use and physical distancing before and after mandatory masking: No evidence on risk compensation in public waiting lines," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 192(C), pages 765-781.
    19. Fetzer, Thiemo & Rauh, Christopher & Schreiner, Clara, 2024. "The hidden toll of the pandemic: Excess mortality in non-COVID-19 hospital patients," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    20. Daniel H. Cooper & Vaishali Garga & María Jose Luengo-Prado & Jenny Tang, 2020. "The Roles of Mobility and Masks in the Spread of COVID-19," Current Policy Perspectives 89224, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Covid-19; public health measures; face masks; synthetic control method; Germany;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:jgu:wpaper:2016. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Research Unit IPP (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vlmaide.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.