 Welfare Costs of COVID-19: Evidence from U.S. CountiesNo 2111, Working Papers from Florida International University, Department of Economics Abstract: Using daily U.S. county-level data on consumption, employment, mobility and the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases, this paper investigates the welfare costs of COVID-19. The investigation is achieved by using implications of a model, where there is a trade-off between consumption and COVID-19 cases that are both determined by the optimal mobility decision of individuals. The empirical results show evidence for about 11% of an average (across days) reduction of welfare during the sample period between February and December, 2020 for the average county. There is also evidence for heterogeneous welfare costs across U.S. counties and days, where certain counties have experienced welfare reductions up to 46% on average across days and up to 97% in late March, 2020 that are further connected to the socioeconomic characteristics of the U.S. counties. Keywords: COVID-19; Coronavirus; Welfare; U.S. Counties (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fiu:wpaper:2111 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Working Papers from Florida International University, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC. |
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