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Background: The German Corona-Warn-App (CWA) is a contact tracing app to mitigate the spread of SARS-CoV-2. As of today, it has been downloaded approximately 45 million times.
Objective: In this study, we investigate the influence of (non-)users' social environments on the usage of the CWA during two time periods with relatively lower death rates and higher death rates caused by SARS-CoV-2.
Methods: We conducted a longitudinal survey study in Germany with 833 participants in two waves to investigate how participants perceive their peer-groups opinion about making use of the German CWA to mitigate the risk of SARS-CoV-2. In addition, we asked whether this perceived opinion, in turn, influences the participants with respect to their own decision to use the CWA. We analyzed these questions with Generalized Estimating Equations (GEE). And with two-related-samples tests to test for differences between users of the CWA and non-users and between the two points in time (wave 1 with the highest death rates observable during the pandemic in Germany versus wave 2 with significantly lower death rates). Results: Participants perceive that peer-groups have a positive opinion towards using the CWA, with more positive opinions by the media, family doctors, politicians and virologists/RKI and a lower, only slightly negative opinion originating from social
media. Users of the CWA perceive their peer groups’ opinions about using the app as more positive than non-users do. Furthermore, the perceived positive opinion of the media and politicians is significantly lower in wave 2 compared to wave 1. The perceived opinion of friends and family as well as their perceived influence towards using the CWA is significantly higher in the latter period compared to wave 1. The influence of virologists (in Germany primarily communicated via the Robert Koch Institute) has the highest positive effect on using the CWA. We only find one decreasing effect of the influence of politicians.
Conclusions: Opinions of peer groups play an important role when it comes to the adoption of the CWA. Our results show that the influence of Virologists / Robert Koch Institute and family/friends exerts the strongest effect on participants decision to use the CWA while politicians had a slightly negative influence. Our results indicate that it is crucial to accompany the introduction of such a contact tracing app with explanations and a media campaign to support its adoption which is backed up by political decision-makers subject-matter experts.
This research article examines the dual impact of protests on COVID-19 spread, a challenge for policymakers balancing public health and the right to assemble. Using a game theoretical model, it shows that protests can shift infection risks between counties, creating a dilemma for regulators. The empirical study analyzes two German protests in November 2020 using proprietary data from a bus-shuttle service, finding evidence to support the assumption that protests can shift infection risks. The article concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for policymakers, highlighting that regulators’ individually rational strategic decisions may lead to inefficient outcomes.
Background: Nations are imposing unprecedented measures at large-scale to contain the spread of COVID-19 pandemic. Recent studies indicate that measures such as lockdowns may have slowed down the growth of COVID-19. However, in addition to substantial economic and social costs, these measures also limit the exposure to Ultraviolet-B radiation (UVB). Emerging observational evidence indicate the protective role of UVB and vitamin D in reducing the severity and mortality of COVID-19 deaths. In this observational study, we empirically outline the independent protective roles of lockdown and UVB exposure as measured by ultraviolet index (UVI), whilst also examining whether the severity of lockdown is associated with a reduction in the protective role.
Methods: We apply a log-linear fixed-effects model to a panel dataset of 162 countries over a period of 108 days (n=6049). We use the cumulative number of COVID-19 deaths as the dependent variable and isolate the mitigating influence of lockdown severity on the association between UVI and growth-rates of COVID-19 deaths from time-constant country-specific and time-varying country-specific potentially confounding factors.
Findings: After controlling for time-constant and time-varying factors, we find that a unit increase in UVI and lockdown severity are independently associated with 17% [-1.8 percentage points] and 77% [-7.9 percentage points] decline in COVID-19 deaths growth rate, indicating their respective protective roles. However, the widely utilized and least severe lockdown (recommendation to not leave the house) already fully mitigates the protective role of UVI by 95% [1.8 percentage points] indicating its downside.
Interpretation: We find that lockdown severity and UVI are independently associated with a slowdown in the daily growth rates of cumulative COVID-19 deaths. However, we find consistent evidence that increase in lockdown severity is associated with a significant reduction in the protective role of UVI in reducing COVID-19 deaths. Our results suggest that lockdowns in conjunction with adequate exposure to UVB radiation might have provided even more substantial health benefits, than lockdowns alone. For example, we estimate that there would be 21% fewer deaths on average with sufficient UVB exposure while people were recommended not to leave their house. Therefore, our study outlines the importance of considering UVB exposure, especially while implementing lockdowns and may support policy decision making in countries imposing such measures.
Competing Interest Statement: RKM is a PhD researcher at Goethe University, Frankfurt. He also is an employee of a multinational chemical company involved in vitamin D business and holds the shares of the company. This study is intended to contribute to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and is not sponsored by his company. All other authors declare no competing interests. The views expressed in the paper are those of the authors and do not represent that of any organization. No other relationships or activities that could appear to have influenced the submitted work.
CONCLUSION The analysis of the exposure measurement problem has shown that the proper measurement of counterparty exposure for portfolios of derivatives transactions is a complex task that cannot be performed without making a lot of simplifying assumptions. Because of the complicated interaction of correlation effects and offsettings from different transactions, the single transaction framework which is currently used by most banks is definitely not capable of accurately determining the portfolio credit risk. When simulation techniques are applied to estimate exposure, the accuracy of exposure estimations can be increased significantly. However, a lot of modelling choices has to be made concerning the valuation of transactions and the stochastic model of underlying market rates. Because the system has to make projections of market rates into the far future, the choice of an appropriate stochastic model for market rate dynamics is crucial in order to prevent unreasonable scenarios. The predominant application of models based on Brownian Motion in today’s bank risk management therefore leads to questionable results in respect to derivatives exposure evaluation.
Job creation schemes (JCS) have been one important programme of active labour market policy in Germany aiming at the re-integration of hard-to-place unemployed individuals into regular employment. In ontrast to earlier evaluation studies of these programmes based on survey data, we use administrative data containing more than 11,000 participants for our analysis and hence, can take effect heterogeneity explicitly into account. We focus on effect heterogeneity caused by differences in the implementation of programmes (economic sector, types of support and implementing institutions). The results are rather discouraging and show that in general, JCS are unable to improve the re-integration chances of participants into regular employment.