IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/zewdip/20034.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The effectiveness of school closures and other pre-lockdown COVID-19 mitigation strategies in Argentina, Italy, and South Korea

Author

Listed:
  • Neidhöfer, Guido
  • Neidhöfer, Claudio

Abstract

The rapid spread of COVID-19 forced policy-makers to swiftly find solutions to reduce infection rates and keep mortality as low as possible. Empirical analyses on the effectiveness of control measures are hereby of primary importance. School closures were among the earliest measures enacted by the governments of most countries. However, while schools are now reopening in many countries, the impact of school closures on the course of the epidemic is still an open question. Adopting parametric and non-parametric synthetic control methods we estimate the effectiveness of pro-active school closures, and other early social distancing interventions, in three countries that reacted relatively early during the course of the pandemic. Our findings suggest that these interventions were effective at reducing the mortality rate of COVID-19, especially when enacted early.

Suggested Citation

  • Neidhöfer, Guido & Neidhöfer, Claudio, 2020. "The effectiveness of school closures and other pre-lockdown COVID-19 mitigation strategies in Argentina, Italy, and South Korea," ZEW Discussion Papers 20-034, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:zewdip:20034
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/222287/1/1724295039.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. T Déirdre Hollingsworth & Don Klinkenberg & Hans Heesterbeek & Roy M Anderson, 2011. "Mitigation Strategies for Pandemic Influenza A: Balancing Conflicting Policy Objectives," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(2), pages 1-11, February.
    2. Jérôme Adda, 2016. "Economic Activity and the Spread of Viral Diseases: Evidence from High Frequency Data," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 131(2), pages 891-941.
    3. Yun Qiu & Xi Chen & Wei Shi, 2020. "Impacts of social and economic factors on the transmission of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in China," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 33(4), pages 1127-1172, October.
    4. Nicola Fuchs-Schündeln & Moritz Kuhn & Michèle Tertilt, 2020. "The short-run macro implications of school and childcare closures," ECONtribute Policy Brief Series 006, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Janbani, Zahra & Osmani, Freshteh, 2023. "Performance of two educational approaches in increasing knowledge of high-school students about COVID-19 during the first wave of pandemic," Evaluation and Program Planning, Elsevier, vol. 100(C).

    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. David E. Bloom & Michael Kuhn & Klaus Prettner, 2022. "Modern Infectious Diseases: Macroeconomic Impacts and Policy Responses," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 60(1), pages 85-131, March.
    2. Nicholas W. Papageorge & Matthew V. Zahn & Michèle Belot & Eline Broek-Altenburg & Syngjoo Choi & Julian C. Jamison & Egon Tripodi, 2021. "Socio-demographic factors associated with self-protecting behavior during the Covid-19 pandemic," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 34(2), pages 691-738, April.
    3. Chen, Simiao & Jin, Zhangfeng & Bloom, David E., 2020. "Act Early to Prevent Infections and Save Lives: Causal Impact of Diagnostic Efficiency on the COVID-19 Pandemic," IZA Discussion Papers 13749, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Cui Zhang & Dandan Zhang, 2023. "Spatial Interactions and the Spread of COVID-19: A Network Perspective," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 62(1), pages 383-405, June.
    5. Abu Bakkar Siddique & Kingsley E. Haynes & Rajendra Kulkarni & Meng-Hao Li, 2023. "Regional poverty and infection disease: early exploratory evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 70(1), pages 209-236, February.
    6. Badi H. Baltagi & Ying Deng & Jing Li & Zhenlin Yang, 2023. "Cities in a pandemic: Evidence from China," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 63(2), pages 379-408, March.
    7. Eiji Yamamura & Yoshiro Tsustsui, 2021. "School closures and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 34(4), pages 1261-1298, October.
    8. Klaus F. Zimmermann & Gokhan Karabulut & Mehmet Huseyin Bilgin & Asli Cansin Doker, 2020. "Inter‐country distancing, globalisation and the coronavirus pandemic," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(6), pages 1484-1498, June.
    9. Teresa Barbieri & Gaetano Basso & Sergio Scicchitano, 2022. "Italian Workers at Risk During the COVID-19 Epidemic," Italian Economic Journal: A Continuation of Rivista Italiana degli Economisti and Giornale degli Economisti, Springer;Società Italiana degli Economisti (Italian Economic Association), vol. 8(1), pages 175-195, March.
    10. Lewandowski, Piotr, 2020. "Occupational Exposure to Contagion and the Spread of COVID-19 in Europe," IZA Discussion Papers 13227, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Keyang Li & Yu Qin & Jing Wu & Jubo Yan, 2023. "Perceived economic prospects during the early stage of COVID‐19 breakout," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 41(4), pages 696-713, October.
    12. Federico Benjamín Galacho-Jiménez & David Carruana-Herrera & Julián Molina & José Damián Ruiz-Sinoga, 2022. "Evidence of the Relationship between Social Vulnerability and the Spread of COVID-19 in Urban Spaces," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(9), pages 1-22, April.
    13. Pawel Dlotko & Simon Rudkin, 2020. "Visualising the Evolution of English Covid-19 Cases with Topological Data Analysis Ball Mapper," Papers 2004.03282, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2020.
    14. Syed Abul Basher & A. K. Enamul Haque, 2021. "Public policy lessons from the Covid-19 outbreak: How to deal with it in the post-pandemic world?," Journal of Social and Economic Development, Springer;Institute for Social and Economic Change, vol. 23(2), pages 234-247, September.
    15. Ján Palguta & René Levínský & Samuel Škoda, 2022. "Do elections accelerate the COVID-19 pandemic?," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 35(1), pages 197-240, January.
    16. Dion Bongaerts & Francesco Mazzola & Wolf Wagner, 2021. "Closed for business: The mortality impact of business closures during the Covid-19 pandemic," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(5), pages 1-17, May.
    17. Fang, Hanming & Wang, Long & Yang, Yang, 2020. "Human mobility restrictions and the spread of the Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in China," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    18. YAMAMURA, Eiji & Tsutsui, Yoshiro, 2020. "Impact of closing schools on mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence using panel data from Japan," MPRA Paper 105023, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Sara Ayllón & Samuel Lado, 2022. "Food Hardship in the US During the Pandemic: What Can We Learn From Real‐Time Data?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 68(2), pages 518-540, June.
    20. Guilhem Cassan & Marc Sangnier, 2022. "The impact of 2020 French municipal elections on the spread of COVID-19," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 35(3), pages 963-988, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    COVID-19; policy evaluation; school closures; mitigation strategies;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • J18 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Public Policy

    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:zbw:zewdip:20034. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/zemande.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.