The COVID‐19 pandemic is a global crisis like no other in modern times, and there is a growing apprehension about handling potentially contaminated cash. This paper is the first empirical attempt in the literature to investigate whether the risk of infectious diseases affects demand for physical cash. Since the intensity of cash use may influence the spread of infectious diseases, this paper utilizes two‐stage least squares methodology with instrumental variable to address omitted variable bias and account for potential endogeneity. The empirical analysis indicates that the spread of infectious diseases lowers demand for physical cash, after controlling for macroeconomic, financial, and technological factors. This effect, withstanding several robustness checks, is economically and statistically significant. While the transactional constraints imposed by the coronavirus pandemic could become a catalyst for the use of digital technologies around the world, electronic payment methods may not be universally available in every country owing to financial and technological bottlenecks.

中文翻译：

---

脏钱：传染病的风险会降低现金​​需求吗？

COVID-19大流行是一种全球性的危机，与现代没有其他人一样，对处理可能受到污染的现金的忧虑也越来越多。本文是研究感染性疾病风险是否影响对实物现金需求的文献研究的首次尝试。由于现金使用的强度可能会影响传染病的传播，因此本文采用两阶段最小二乘方法和工具变量来解决遗漏变量偏差并解释潜在的内生性。实证分析表明，在控制了宏观经济，金融和技术因素之后，传染病的传播降低了对现金的需求。经数次鲁棒性检查后，这种效果在经济和统计上都很重要。