The spread of social distancing

Jonathan Cook; Noah Newberger; Sami Smalling

doi:10.1016/j.econlet.2020.109511

The spread of social distancing

Econ Lett. 2020 Nov:196:109511. doi: 10.1016/j.econlet.2020.109511. Epub 2020 Sep 1.

Authors

Jonathan Cook¹, Noah Newberger¹, Sami Smalling²

Affiliations

¹ Oeste Corp, Division of Research and Statistics, United States of America.
² Cornell University, United States of America.

Abstract

We find that social distancing is affected by the policies set in neighboring counties, even after controlling for confirmed COVID cases and weather. A stay-at-home order in a neighboring county reduces social distancing by more than half as much as implementing an order in that county. This implies that, to increase social distancing in hard-hit counties, stay-at-home orders need to be implemented in a regionally or federally coordinated response. We also find that estimates of the efficacy of stay-at-home orders that do not control for policies in neighboring counties overstate the effect of these orders by about 50%.

Keywords: COVID-19; Social distancing; Spatial autoregression; Spillover effects.