IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eme/jespps/jes-01-2022-0032.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Weather, mobility and the evolution of the Covid-19 pandemic

Author

Listed:
  • Corinna Ghirelli
  • Andrea Gonzalez
  • Jose Luis Herrera
  • Samuel Hurtado

Abstract

Purpose - The authors investigate the effect of weather and mobility on the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. Design/methodology/approach - The authors first estimate the effective reproduction number (Rt) as a proxy of the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic and then study the relationship between the latter and weather and mobility in a panel data framework. The authors use US daily infections data between February and September of 2020 at the county level. Findings - The authors find that lower temperatures are associated with a higher Rt, and this effect is greater at temperatures below 0°C. In addition, mobility reductions related to certain types of locations (retail and recreation, transit stations and workplaces) are effective at reducing Rt, but it is an increase in the time spent in parks that most helps reduce the spread of the pandemic. Originality/value - The estimates imply that a 20°C fall in temperature from summer to winter would increase Rt by +0.35, which can be the difference between a well-controlled evolution and explosive behavior of the spread of the virus. Applying these coefficients estimated with US county data to aggregate series from other countries helps explain the resurgence of the pandemic in the Northern Hemisphere during the winter of 2020. The results show that mobility reduction and social distance are best policies to cope with the Covid-19 outbreak. This strong policy lesson will help facing similar outbreaks in the future.

Suggested Citation

  • Corinna Ghirelli & Andrea Gonzalez & Jose Luis Herrera & Samuel Hurtado, 2022. "Weather, mobility and the evolution of the Covid-19 pandemic," Journal of Economic Studies, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 50(3), pages 625-641, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:eme:jespps:jes-01-2022-0032
    DOI: 10.1108/JES-01-2022-0032
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JES-01-2022-0032/full/html?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JES-01-2022-0032/full/pdf?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1108/JES-01-2022-0032?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 look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Ángel Luis Gómez & Ana del Río, 2021. "The uneven impact of the health crisis on the euro area economies in 2020," Occasional Papers 2115, Banco de España.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Pandemic; Covid-19; Coronavirus; Weather; Mobility; Panel data; C23; I12; I18;
    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
    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior

    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:eme:jespps:jes-01-2022-0032. 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: Emerald Support (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.