I. Introduction Many countries have imposed aggressive containment and social distancing measures in an effort to slow the spread of Covid-19. While the pandemic and containment measures undoubtedly lead to significant economic fallouts, the effects of the latter are still debated. Sweden’s strategy to contain the Covid-19 pandemic has been less stringent than in other advanced economies during the ‘Great Lockdown’ in Europe in March and April 2020. This makes Sweden an outlier in terms of its containment policies, even though the containment strategies
literature of smart containment strategies that point to targeted lockdowns and selective quarantine (e.g. Eichenbaum et al., 2020 , Favero et al., 2020 , Acemoglu et al., 2020 ). As Andrabi et al. (2020) highlight, a smart containment strategy should be underpinned by data and contact tracing together with testing and authorities promoting voluntary compliance and trust. Dewatripont et al. (2020) propose a two-test approach to identify workers that are immune and non infectious, in line with Berger et al. (2020) who discuss the importance of testing and targeted
Front Matter Page European Department Contents I. INTRODUCTION II. SWEDEN’S CONTAINMENT STRATEGY IN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE III. SWEDEN’S HEALTH OUTCOMES SO FAR IV. CONTAINMENT POLICIES AND ECONOMIC OUTCOMES A. A ggregate E conomic A ctivity B. S ectoral E conomic A ctivity C. J ob S eekers and B eneficiaries of S hort-term W ork S chemes D. M obility I ndicators V. C onclusion and P olicy I mplications REFERENCES FIGURES 1. S trictness of S ocial D istancing M easures 2. N umber of R eported COVID-19 C