This paper investigates how economic activity impacted Covid-19 infections and all-cause mortality. To this purpose, we exploit the distribution of essential sectors, which were exempted from a national lockdown enacted in Italy during the first wave of the pandemic, across provinces and rich administrative data in a difference-in-differences framework. We find that a standard deviation increase in essential workers per built square kilometre leads to 1.1 additional daily cases and 0.32 additional daily deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. Back of the envelope calculations suggest that about one third (47,000) of the Covid-19 cases and about 13% (13,000) of deaths between March and May of 2020 can be attributed to the less stringent lockdown for these sectors. The effect is heterogeneous across sectors. Finally, we find that the local health system played a relevant role in reducing fatalities with a higher number of general practitioners and hospital beds per capita being associated with a lower mortality. ? 2021 Elsevier B.V.

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1 January 2022

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Journal of Health Economics 812022

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DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2021.102572

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167629621001570?via%3Dihub

This Journal article is published under the centre's Education programme, Labour programme.