Critics protest loudly against restrictions imposed by politicians during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany: Mandatory masks, lockdowns, school and business closures. This paper examines (1) the extent to which these policies have indirectly contributed to limiting the number of COVID-19 cases...

How much did young people suffer from the COVID-19 pandemic? A growing number of studies address this question, but they often lack a comparison group that was unaffected by the pandemic, and the observation window is usually short. Here, we compared the 2-year development of life satisfaction...

The COVID-19 pandemic severely affected not only incumbent firms, but also the emergence of start-ups. This paper investigates and analyzes the pandemic's effect on new business formation, as well as business exits and insolvencies, in Germany. We find that the overall level of business...

We evaluate the impact of government mandated proof of vaccination requirements for access to public venues and non-essential businesses on COVID-19 vaccine uptake. We find that the announcement of a mandate is associated with a rapid and significant surge in new vaccinations (more than 60%...

We evaluate the impact of government-mandated proof of vaccination requirements for access to public venues and non-essential businesses on COVID-19 vaccine uptake. We find that the announcement of a mandate is associated with a rapid and significant surge in new vaccinations (more than 60%...

We assess the impact of the timing of lockdown measures implemented in Germany and Switzerland on cumulative COVID-19-related hospitalization and death rates. Our analysis exploits the fact that the epidemic was more advanced in some regions than in others when certain lockdown measures came...

We study the impact of short-term exposure to ambient air pollution on the spread and severity of COVID-19 in Germany. We combine data on county-by-day level on confirmed cases and deaths with information on local air quality and weather conditions and exploit short-term variation in the...