To fight the spread of COVID-19, many countries implemented social distancing policies. This is the first paper that examines the effects of the German social distancing policies on behavior and the epidemic's spread. Exploiting the staggered timing of COVID-19 outbreaks in extended event-study models, we find that the policies heavily reduced mobility and contagion. In comparison to a no-social-distancing benchmark, within three weeks, the policies avoided 84% of the potential COVID-19 cases (point estimate: 499.3K) and 66% of the potential fatalities (5.4K). The policies' relative effects were smaller for individuals above 60 and in rural areas.

中文翻译：

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社会疏远政策的效果如何？抗击 COVID-19 的证据。

为了对抗 COVID-19 的传播，许多国家实施了社会疏远政策。这是第一篇研究德国社会疏远政策对行为和流行病传播的影响的论文。利用扩展事件研究模型中 COVID-19 爆发的交错时间，我们发现这些政策大大降低了流动性和传染性。与无社交距离基准相比，在三周内，这些政策避免了 84% 的潜在 COVID-19 病例（点估计：499.3K）和 66% 的潜在死亡人数（5.4K）。这些政策对 60 岁以上和农村地区的相对影响较小。