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Cited by 749COVID-19 Pandemic ImpactsCOVID-19 epidemiological studiesCOVID-19 Prevention and Impact

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 54 of the 55 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Fear, lockdown, and diversion: Comparing drivers of pandemic economic decline 2020

Open access
Goolsbee, Austan, Syverson, Chad·2021·Journal of Public Economics
DOI 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104311PMC PMC7687454
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Abstract

The collapse of economic activity in 2020 from COVID-19 has been immense. An important question is how much of that collapse resulted from government-imposed restrictions versus people voluntarily choosing to stay home to avoid infection. This paper examines the drivers of the economic slowdown using cellular phone records data on customer visits to more than 2.25 million individual businesses across 110 different industries. Comparing consumer behavior over the crisis within the same commuting zones but across state and county boundaries with different policy regimes suggests that legal shutdown orders account for only a modest share of the massive changes to consumer behavior (and that tracking county-level policy conditions is significantly more accurate than using state-level policies alone). While overall consumer traffic fell by 60 percentage points, legal restrictions explain only 7 percentage points of this. Individual choices were far more important and seem tied to fears of infection. Traffic started dropping before the legal orders were in place; was highly influenced by the number of COVID deaths reported in the county; and showed a clear shift by consumers away from busier, more crowded stores toward smaller, less busy stores in the same industry. States that repealed their shutdown orders saw symmetric, modest recoveries in consumer visits, further supporting the small estimated effect of policy. Although the shutdown orders had little aggregate impact, they did have a significant effect in reallocating consumer visits away from "nonessential" to "essential" businesses and from restaurants and bars toward groceries and other food sellers.

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  1. Berry, 2020, Not another COVID paper: the modest effects of shelter-in-place policies, Mimeo

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Metadata

Authors
Goolsbee, A., & Syverson, C.
Affiliations
University of Chicago (US)
Corresponding author
Goolsbee, Austan
ORCID
Venue
Journal of Public Economics
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2021-01
Volume
193
Pages
104311
ISSN
0047-2727 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104311
PMC
PMC7687454
OpenAlex
W3037490325
Cited by
749
References
55
Citations by year
2026: 35 · 2025: 71 · 2024: 84 · 2023: 117 · 2022: 182 · 2021: 163
FWCI
119.40
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Journal of Public Economics (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › COVID-19 Pandemic Impacts
  • Physical Sciences › Mathematics › Modeling and Simulation › COVID-19 epidemiological studies
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › COVID-19 Prevention and Impact
Keywords
COVID-19 pandemic, economic decline, consumer behavior, fear of infection, business closures, store traffic, essential businesses, COVID-19 mortality, policy effectiveness, restaurant closures, food retail

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