Learning from Deregulation: The Asymmetric Impact of Lockdown and Reopening on Risky Behavior During COVID-19

Edward Glaeser (), Ginger Zhe Jin, Benjamin Leyden and Michael Luca

No 27650, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: During the COVID-19 pandemic, states issued and then rescinded stay-at-home orders that restricted mobility. We develop a model of learning by deregulation, which predicts that lifting stay-at-home orders can signal that going out has become safer. Using restaurant activity data, we find that the implementation of stay-at-home orders initially had a limited impact, but that activity rose quickly after states’ reopenings. The results suggest that consumers inferred from reopening that it was safer to eat out. The rational, but mistaken inference that occurs in our model may explain why a sharp rise of COVID-19 cases followed reopening in some states.

JEL-codes: D8 I18 K0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-08
Note: HE LE PE POL PR
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1) Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w27650.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:27650

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w27650
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().