The COVID-19 Pandemic: Government vs. Community Action Across the United States

Adam Brzezinski, Guido Deiana, Valentin Kecht and David Van Dijcke

INET Oxford Working Papers from Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford

Abstract: Are lockdown policies effective at inducing physical distancing to counter the spread of COVID-19? Can less restrictive measures that rely on voluntary community action achieve a similar effect? Using data from 40 million mobile devices, we find that a lockdown increases the percentage of people who stay at home by 8\% across US counties. Grouping states with similar outbreak trajectories together and using an instrumental variablesapproach, we show that time spent at home can increase by as much as 39\%. Moreover, we show that individuals engage in limited physical distancing even in the absence of such policies, once the virus takes hold in their area. Our analysis suggests that non-causal estimates of lockdown policies' effects can yield biased results. We show that counties where people have less distrust in science, are more highly educated, or have higher incomes see a substantially higher uptake of voluntary physical distancing. This suggests that the targeted promotion of distancing among less responsive groups may be as effective as across-the-board lockdowns, while also being less damaging to the economy.

Keywords: COVID-19; difference-in-differences; instrumental variables; NPI; community action; physical distancing; big data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D04 H12 H75 I12 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 43 pages
Date: 2020-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-isf and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (36)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:amz:wpaper:2020-06

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