[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/28374.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Impact of the Non-essential Business Closure Policy on Covid-19 Infection Rates

Author

Listed:
  • Hummy Song
  • Ryan M. McKenna
  • Angela T. Chen
  • Guy David
  • Aaron Smith-McLallen
Abstract
In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, many localities instituted non-essential business closure orders, keeping individuals categorized as essential workers at the frontlines while sending their non-essential counterparts home. We examine the extent to which being designated as an essential or non-essential worker impacts one’s risk of being Covid-positive following the non-essential business closure order in Pennsylvania. We also assess the intrahousehold transmission risk experienced by their cohabiting family members and roommates. Using a difference-in-differences framework, we estimate that workers designated as essential have a 55% higher likelihood of being positive for Covid-19 than those classified as non-essential; in other words, non-essential workers experience a protective effect. While members of the health care and social assistance subsector contribute significantly to this overall effect, it is not completely driven by them. We also find evidence of intrahousehold transmission that differs in intensity by essential status. Dependents cohabiting with an essential worker have a 17% higher likelihood of being Covid-positive compared to those cohabiting with a non-essential worker. Roommates cohabiting with an essential worker experience a 38% increase in likelihood of being Covid-positive. Analysis of households with a Covid-positive member suggests that intrahousehold transmission is an important mechanism

Suggested Citation

  • Hummy Song & Ryan M. McKenna & Angela T. Chen & Guy David & Aaron Smith-McLallen, 2021. "The Impact of the Non-essential Business Closure Policy on Covid-19 Infection Rates," NBER Working Papers 28374, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28374
    Note: EH LS PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w28374.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Couch, Kenneth A. & Fairlie, Robert W. & Xu, Huanan, 2020. "The Impacts of COVID-19 on Minority Unemployment: First Evidence from April 2020 CPS Microdata," IZA Discussion Papers 13264, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. R Maria del Rio-Chanona & Penny Mealy & Anton Pichler & François Lafond & J Doyne Farmer, 0. "Supply and demand shocks in the COVID-19 pandemic: an industry and occupation perspective," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 36(Supplemen), pages 94-137.
    3. Ansel Schiavone, 2020. "Essentially Unemployed: Potential Implications of the COVID-19 Crisis on Wage Inequality," Working Paper Series, Department of Economics, University of Utah 2020_06, University of Utah, Department of Economics.
    4. Forsythe, Eliza & Kahn, Lisa B. & Lange, Fabian & Wiczer, David, 2020. "Labor demand in the time of COVID-19: Evidence from vacancy postings and UI claims," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    5. Goolsbee, Austan & Syverson, Chad, 2021. "Fear, lockdown, and diversion: Comparing drivers of pandemic economic decline 2020," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 193(C).
    6. R Maria del Rio-Chanona & Penny Mealy & Anton Pichler & François Lafond & J Doyne Farmer, 2020. "Supply and demand shocks in the COVID-19 pandemic: an industry and occupation perspective," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 36(Supplemen), pages 94-137.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gene Ambrocio, 2022. "Euro-area business confidence and COVID-19," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(43), pages 4915-4929, September.
    2. Barrot, Jean-Noël & Bonelli, Maxime & Grassi, Basile & Sauvagnat, Julien, 2024. "Causal effects of closing businesses in a pandemic," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    3. Maureen Were & Kethi Ngoka, 2022. "An assessment of the effects of COVID-19 pandemic on Kenya's trade," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2022-8, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    4. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2021_004 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Paul, Jomon A. & Wang, Xinfang & Bagchi, Aniruddha, 2024. "Lives or livelihoods: A configurational perspective of COVID-19 policies," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    6. Gaggero, Alessio & Mesa-Pedrazas, Ángela & Fernández-Pérez, Ángel, 2024. "Shutting down to save lives: A regression discontinuity analysis of non-essential business closure," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    7. Gene Ambrocio, 2022. "Euro-area business confidence and COVID-19," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(43), pages 4915-4929, September.
    8. Porto, Edoardo Di & Naticchioni, Paolo & Scrutinio, Vincenzo, 2022. "Lockdown, essential sectors, and Covid-19: Lessons from Italy," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hummy Song & Ryan McKenna & Angela T. Chen & Guy David & Aaron Smith-McLallen, 2021. "The impact of the non-essential business closure policy on Covid-19 infection rates," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 21(4), pages 387-426, December.
    2. Severin Reissl & Alessandro Caiani & Francesco Lamperti & Mattia Guerini & Fabio Vanni & Giorgio Fagiolo & Tommaso Ferraresi & Leonardo Ghezzi & Mauro Napoletano & Andrea Roventini, 2022. "Assessing the Economic Impact of Lockdowns in Italy: A Computational Input–Output Approach [Nonlinear Production Networks with an Application to the Covid-19 Crisis]," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 31(2), pages 358-409.
    3. Borja Gambau & Juan C. Palomino & Juan G. Rodríguez & Raquel Sebastian, 2022. "COVID-19 restrictions in the US: wage vulnerability by education, race and gender," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(25), pages 2900-2915, May.
    4. Muhammed A. Yildirim & Cem Cakmakli & Selva Demiralp & Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan & Sevcan Yesiltas, 2021. "The Economic Case for Global Vaccinations: An Epidemiological Model with International Production Networks," CID Working Papers 390, Center for International Development at Harvard University.
    5. Palomino, Juan C. & Rodríguez, Juan G. & Sebastian, Raquel, 2020. "Wage inequality and poverty effects of lockdown and social distancing in Europe," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    6. Cerqua, Augusto & Letta, Marco, 2022. "Local inequalities of the COVID-19 crisis," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    7. Couch, Kenneth A. & Fairlie, Robert W. & Xu, Huanan, 2020. "Early evidence of the impacts of COVID-19 on minority unemployment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 192(C).
    8. Allen Bellas & Lea-Rachel Kosnik, 2023. "The Local and Aggregated Impacts of Stay-at-Home Orders on State Level Unemployment Outcomes," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 49(2), pages 142-155, April.
    9. Arceo-Gomez, Eva O. & Campos-Vazquez, Raymundo M. & Esquivel, Gerardo & Alcaraz, Eduardo & Martinez, Luis A. & Lopez, Norma G., 2023. "The impact of COVID-19 infection on labor outcomes of Mexican formal workers," World Development Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 29(C).
    10. Oikonomou, Myrto & Pierri, Nicola & Timmer, Yannick, 2023. "IT shields: Technology adoption and economic resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    11. Severin Reissl & Alessandro Caiani & Francesco Lamperti & Tommaso Ferraresi & Leonardo Ghezzi, 2024. "A regional input-output model of the COVID-19 crisis in Italy: decomposing demand and supply factors," Economic Systems Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(1), pages 100-130, January.
    12. Michael D. Noel, 2022. "Competitive survival in a devastated industry: Evidence from hotels during COVID‐19," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(1), pages 3-24, February.
    13. Carmen Valentina Radulescu & Georgiana-Raluca Ladaru & Sorin Burlacu & Florentina Constantin & Corina Ioanăș & Ionut Laurentiu Petre, 2020. "Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Romanian Labor Market," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(1), pages 1-23, December.
    14. Daniel Garrote Sanchez & Nicolas Gomez Parra & Caglar Ozden & Bob Rijkers & Mariana Viollaz & Hernan Winkler, 2021. "Who on Earth Can Work from Home? [Secular Stagnation? The Effect of Aging on Economic Growth in the Age of Automation]," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 36(1), pages 67-100.
    15. Kubota, So & Onishi, Koichiro & Toyama, Yuta, 2021. "Consumption responses to COVID-19 payments: Evidence from a natural experiment and bank account data," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 188(C), pages 1-17.
    16. Bisin, Alberto & Moro, Andrea, 2022. "Spatial‐SIR with network structure and behavior: Lockdown rules and the Lucas critique," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 198(C), pages 370-388.
    17. Torsten Heinrich, 2021. "Epidemics in modern economies," Chemnitz Economic Papers 045, Department of Economics, Chemnitz University of Technology, revised May 2021.
    18. repec:arp:sjefsm:2021:p:64-80 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Nano Prawoto & Eko Priyo Purnomo & Abitassha Az Zahra, 2020. "The Impacts of Covid-19 Pandemic on Socio-Economic Mobility in Indonesia," International Journal of Economics & Business Administration (IJEBA), International Journal of Economics & Business Administration (IJEBA), vol. 0(3), pages 57-71.
    20. Bloom, Nicholas & Davis, Steven J. & Hansen, Stephen & Lambert, Peter John & Sadun, Raffaella & Taska, Bledi, 2023. "Remote work across jobs, companies and space," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 121302, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    21. Fabian Stephany & Michael Dunn & Steven Sawyer & Vili Lehdonvirta, 2020. "Distancing Bonus Or Downscaling Loss? The Changing Livelihood of Us Online Workers in Times of COVID‐19," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 111(3), pages 561-573, July.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H75 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Government: Health, Education, and Welfare
    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • I14 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Inequality
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure
    • J68 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Public Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28374. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.