{"title":"A trade-off between lives and the economy? Subsidizing dining out under the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan","authors":"Yupeng Wang, Satoru Shimokawa","doi":"10.1016/j.foodpol.2024.102625","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We investigate how a government subsidy for dining out to support the restaurant industry has been associated with economic and health outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan. Using nationwide 500-meter mesh data, we demonstrate that Japan’s Go To Eat scheme, which was gradually introduced across all prefectures beginning in October 2020, mitigated the negative impact of the pandemic on population mobility in restaurant areas, while having little association with the spread of COVID-19 afterward. The influence was particularly large for population mobility within a prefecture and in restaurant areas near train stations. The scheme also had diminishing positive spillover effects around the restaurant areas. The findings imply that such a subsidy can be a balanced policy response to the pandemic once epidemiological factors are properly managed.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":321,"journal":{"name":"Food Policy","volume":"124 ","pages":"Article 102625"},"PeriodicalIF":6.8000,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306919224000368/pdfft?md5=e7f2f1dcbc26ee3de984d287213b0216&pid=1-s2.0-S0306919224000368-main.pdf","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Food Policy","FirstCategoryId":"97","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306919224000368","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS & POLICY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
We investigate how a government subsidy for dining out to support the restaurant industry has been associated with economic and health outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan. Using nationwide 500-meter mesh data, we demonstrate that Japan’s Go To Eat scheme, which was gradually introduced across all prefectures beginning in October 2020, mitigated the negative impact of the pandemic on population mobility in restaurant areas, while having little association with the spread of COVID-19 afterward. The influence was particularly large for population mobility within a prefecture and in restaurant areas near train stations. The scheme also had diminishing positive spillover effects around the restaurant areas. The findings imply that such a subsidy can be a balanced policy response to the pandemic once epidemiological factors are properly managed.
期刊介绍:
Food Policy is a multidisciplinary journal publishing original research and novel evidence on issues in the formulation, implementation, and evaluation of policies for the food sector in developing, transition, and advanced economies.
Our main focus is on the economic and social aspect of food policy, and we prioritize empirical studies informing international food policy debates. Provided that articles make a clear and explicit contribution to food policy debates of international interest, we consider papers from any of the social sciences. Papers from other disciplines (e.g., law) will be considered only if they provide a key policy contribution, and are written in a style which is accessible to a social science readership.