IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/germec/v22y2021i4p415-446n3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Après-ski: The spread of coronavirus from Ischgl through Germany

Author

Listed:
  • Felbermayr Gabriel
  • Hinz Julian
  • Chowdhry Sonali

    (Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Kiellinie 66, 24105 Kiel, Germany)

Abstract

The Austrian ski resort of Ischgl is commonly claimed to be ground zero for the diffusion of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the first wave of infections experienced by Germany. Drawing on data for 401 German counties, we find that conditional on geographical latitude and testing behavior by health authorities, road distance to Ischgl is indeed an important predictor of infection cases, but – in line with expectations – not of fatality rates. Were all German counties located as far from Ischgl as the most distant county of Vorpommern-Rügen, Germany would have seen about 45 % fewer COVID-19 cases. A simple diffusion model predicts that the absolute value of the distance-to-Ischgl elasticity should fall over time when inter- and intra-county mobility are unrestricted. We test this hypothesis and conclude that the German lockdown measures have halted the spread of the virus.

Suggested Citation

  • Felbermayr Gabriel & Hinz Julian & Chowdhry Sonali, 2021. "Après-ski: The spread of coronavirus from Ischgl through Germany," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 22(4), pages 415-446, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:germec:v:22:y:2021:i:4:p:415-446:n:3
    DOI: 10.1515/ger-2020-0063
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/ger-2020-0063
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1515/ger-2020-0063?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Anthonin Levelu & Alexander-Nikolai Sandkamp, 2022. "A Lockdown a Day Keeps the Doctor Away: The Global Effectiveness of Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions in Mitigating the Covid-19 Pandemic," CESifo Working Paper Series 10023, CESifo.
    2. Matthias Flückiger & Markus Ludwig, 2023. "Spatial networks and the spread of COVID-19: results and policy implications from Germany," Review of Regional Research: Jahrbuch für Regionalwissenschaft, Springer;Gesellschaft für Regionalforschung (GfR), vol. 43(1), pages 1-27, April.
    3. Alipour, Jean-Victor & Falck, Oliver & Schüller, Simone, 2023. "Germany’s capacity to work from home," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    4. Tobias Hartl, 2021. "Monitoring the pandemic: A fractional filter for the COVID-19 contact rate," Papers 2102.10067, arXiv.org.
    5. Fischer Kai, 2022. "Thinning out spectators: Did football matches contribute to the second COVID-19 wave in Germany?," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 23(4), pages 595-640, December.
    6. Landsgesell, Lukas & Stadler, Manfred, 2020. "The spread of COVID-19 in Germany: An application of the SIRDH model," University of Tübingen Working Papers in Business and Economics 139, University of Tuebingen, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, School of Business and Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Coronavirus; super-spreaders; Germany; spatial diffusion; negative binomial model; tourism;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • R11 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes

    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:bpj:germec:v:22:y:2021:i:4:p:415-446:n:3. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyter.com .

    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.