COVID-19 Relief Programs and Compliance with Confinement Measures

Arbeitspapier

We study the impact of a COVID-19 relief program on compliance with confinement measures in Italy, the early epicenter of the pandemic. We match information on the allocation of funds across Italian municipalities with data tracking citizens' movements drawn from mobile devices and vehicles' navigation systems, anonymized and aggregated at the municipality level. To assess the role of the program, we exploit a sharp kink schedule in the allocation of funds as a function of past income differentials that generated random treatment assignment in a neighborhood of the threshold point. We find robust evidence that, after the introduction of the program, mobility decreased with the amount of transfers. The impact is economically sizeable and resists bandwidth changes, with stronger effects holding in the proximity of the cut-off and the coefficient stabilizing with distance from the threshold. A battery of placebo tests supports the interpretation of results. Our evidence suggests that authorities could leverage targeted relief programs to nudge compliance with emergency measures at a relatively modest cost.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 14064

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis ; Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness ; National Government Expenditures and Health ; Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents: Household ; Health Behavior ; Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior: General
• Subject: Coronavirus pandemic ; COVID-19 policy response ; lockdown ; stay-at-home orders ; mobility ; compliance ; social capital ; Regression Kink Design ; COVID-19

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Deiana, Claudio ; Geraci, Andrea ; Mazzarella, Gianluca ; Sabatini, Fabio
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2021

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/232816
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:41 AM CET