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We thank Hiro Kasahara and Kevin Schnepel for excellent comments and suggestions. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. At least one co-author has disclosed a financial relationship of potential relevance for this research. Further information is available online at http://www.nber.org/papers/w27891.ack NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

We estimate the impact of indoor face mask mandates and other non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) on COVID-19 case growth in Canada. Mask mandate introduction was staggered from mid-June to mid-August 2020 in the 34 public health regions in Ontario, Canada’s largest province by population. Using this variation, we find that mask mandates are associated with a 22 percent weekly reduction in new COVID-19 cases, relative to the trend in absence of mandate. Province-level data provide corroborating evidence. We control for mobility behaviour using Google geo-location data and for lagged case totals and case growth as information variables. Our analysis of additional survey data shows that mask mandates led to an increase of about 27 percentage points in self-reported mask wearing in public. Counterfactual policy simulations suggest that adopting a nationwide mask mandate in June could have reduced the total number of diagnosed COVID-19 cases in Canada by over 50,000 over the period July–November 2020. Jointly, our results indicate that mandating mask wearing in indoor public places can be a powerful policy tool to slow the spread of COVID-19.

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We propose a finite-horizon continuous-time framework for coalitional bargaining, in which players can make offers at random discrete times. In our model: (i) expected payoffs in Markov perfect equilibrium (MPE) are unique, generating sharp predictions and facilitating comparative statics; and (ii) MPE are the only subgame perfect Nash equilibria (SPNE) that can be approximated by SPNE of nearby discrete-time bargaining models. We investigate the limit MPE payoffs as the time horizon goes to infinity and players get infinitely patient. In convex games, we establish that the set of these limit payoffs achievable by varying recognition rates is exactly the core of the characteristic function. (JEL C78)