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The Covid-19 vaccine passports: a failure of policy

Mats Ekman

European Journal of Law and Economics2026https://doi.org/10.1007/s10657-026-09872-4article
AJG 1ABDC C
Weight
0.50

What the paper says

Abstract In many countries, the roll-out of the Covid-19 vaccines was accompanied by vaccine passports. In Sweden, anyone aged 18 or above was required to have taken two doses of an approved vaccine to visit any venues with a capacity of a hundred guests or more. This article compares Swedish 17- and 18-year-olds in difference-in-difference and event-study analyses. These indicate that the vaccine passports produced an effect that lasted around four or five weeks and led to at most approximately one per cent of unvaccinated 18-year-olds getting vaccinated. The vaccines were not sterilizing but plausibly lowered the reproductive value and thereby slowed the spread of the virus. However, with at most a negligible effect on take-up, there is little to recommend the vaccine passports.

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Cite this paper

https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/s10657-026-09872-4

Or copy a formatted citation

@article{mats2026,
  title        = {{The Covid-19 vaccine passports: a failure of policy}},
  author       = {Mats Ekman},
  journal      = {European Journal of Law and Economics},
  year         = {2026},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/s10657-026-09872-4},
}

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Evidence weight

0.50

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20
M · momentum0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.