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Covid-19 across European Regions: the Role of Border Controls

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  • Wolf, Nikolaus
  • Eckardt, Matthias

Abstract

Attempts to constrain the spread of Covid-19 included the temporal reintroduction of travel restrictions and border controls within the Schengen area. While such restrictions clearly involve costs, their benefits have been disputed. We use a new set of daily regional data of confirmed Covid-19 cases from the respective statistical agencies of 18 Western European countries. Our data starts with calendar week 10 (starting 2nd March 2020) and extends to calendar week 17 (ending 26th April 2020), which allows us to test for treatment effects of border controls. We use Poisson models with fixed effects and controls for the stringency of national measures, as well as a Bayesian spatio-temporal specification using an integrated nested Laplace approximation (INLA) to take unobserved spatio-temporal heterogeneity into account. Both approaches suggest that border controls had a significant effect to limit the pandemic.

Suggested Citation

  • Wolf, Nikolaus & Eckardt, Matthias, 2020. "Covid-19 across European Regions: the Role of Border Controls," CEPR Discussion Papers 15178, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:15178
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    Cited by:

    1. 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 [Using synthetic controls: Feasibility, data requirements, and methodological aspects]," The Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 25(1), pages 46-70.
    2. Jacek Rothert & Ryan Brady & Michael Insler, 2020. "The Fragmented United States of America: The impact of scattered lock-down policies on country-wide infections," Departmental Working Papers 65, United States Naval Academy Department of Economics.
    3. Richard Bluhm & Maxim Pinkovskiy, 2021. "The spread of COVID-19 and the BCG vaccine: A natural experiment in reunified Germany," The Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 24(3), pages 353-376.
    4. Backhaus, Andreas, 2022. "International travel in times of the COVID-19 pandemic: The case of German school breaks," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 44(C).
    5. O'Connor, Cliodhna & O'Connell, Nicola & Burke, Emma & Dempster, Martin & Graham, Christopher D. & Scally, Gabriel & Zgaga, Lina & Nolan, Ann & Nicolson, Gail & Mather, Luke & Barry, Joseph & Crowley,, 2021. "Bordering on crisis: A qualitative analysis of focus group, social media, and news media perspectives on the Republic of Ireland-Northern Ireland border during the ‘first wave’ of the COVID-19 pandemi," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 282(C).
    6. Rothert, Jacek, 2021. "Strategic inefficiencies and federal redistribution during uncoordinated response to pandemic waves," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    7. Jacek Rothert, 2021. "Optimal federal transfers during uncoordinated response to a pandemic," GRAPE Working Papers 58, GRAPE Group for Research in Applied Economics.
    8. Liana R Woskie & Jonathan Hennessy & Valeria Espinosa & Thomas C Tsai & Swapnil Vispute & Benjamin H Jacobson & Ciro Cattuto & Laetitia Gauvin & Michele Tizzoni & Alex Fabrikant & Krishna Gadepalli & , 2021. "Early social distancing policies in Europe, changes in mobility & COVID-19 case trajectories: Insights from Spring 2020," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(6), pages 1-12, June.
    9. Francetic, Igor, 2021. "Bad law or implementation flaws? Lessons from the implementation of the new law on epidemics during the response to the first wave of COVID-19 in Switzerland," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 125(10), pages 1285-1290.
    10. Jacek Rothert & Ryan Brady & Michael Insler, 2020. "Local containment policies and country-wide spread of Covid-19 in the United States: an epidemiological analysis," GRAPE Working Papers 48, GRAPE Group for Research in Applied Economics.
    11. Umut Akovali & Kamil Yilmaz, 2020. "Polarized Politics of Pandemic Response and the Covid-19 Connectedness Across the U.S. States," Koç University-TUSIAD Economic Research Forum Working Papers 2019, Koc University-TUSIAD Economic Research Forum.
    12. Oliu-Barton, Miquel & Pradelski, Bary S.R., 2021. "Green zoning: An effective policy tool to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 125(8), pages 981-986.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Covid-19; Border effects; Inla;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C33 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • R23 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population

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