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Can civic-minded individuals fight against a pandemic? In this paper, we show that civic capital plays an important role when assessing the level of compliance with COVID-19 vaccination recommendations. Analyzing data on a large sample of municipalities from the Italian region of Lombardy, we show that the share of vaccinated individuals is significantly higher in municipalities with higher pre-determined levels of civic capital. These findings are robust to the possibility of spatial spillovers across neighboring municipalities. Our findings contribute to the existing evidence highlighting the importance of individual contributions and civic capital as important behavioral determinants affecting the containment of infectious diseases., (© 2023 The Authors. Health Economics published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

We provide results on the level of COVID-19 excess mortality in the Italian region of Lombardy and in the province of Bergamo using official and original data sources. Since February 2020 Lombardy and in particular the province of Bergamo have been severely hit by the novel COVID-19 infectious disease. Combining official statistics, retrospective data and original data (i.e., obituaries and death notices) we provide a tentative estimate of the number of deaths either directly or indirectly, associated with COVID-19 as well as the total number of persons infected. Our findings suggest that the reported number of deaths attributable to COVID-19 identified by public authorities accounts only for one half of the observed excess mortality between March 2020 and previous years., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.