SIR, social distancing, Covid-19, workforce composition

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Škultéty O. (2025): " Workforce Composition Effects on Covid-19 Spread: a SIR model and an Application to the Czech Regions " IES Working Papers 15/2025. IES FSV. Charles University.

One of the main types of government intervention aimed at fighting the COVID-19 pandemic were the social distancing measures. This article presents a novel approach to examining the relationship between social distancing and workforce composition. The model used is a SIRD model with dynamically optimizing individuals. The model is estimated for each Czech region and calibrated for the ’social distancing measure’ so that the model predictions best fit the data. This measure is then compared in a regression with the share of skilled labour in each region. This article finds that a significant correlation between social distancing preferences and workforce composition.