Document Type
Article
Publication Date
6-10-2020
Abstract
To prevent the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), some types of public spaces have been shut down while others remain open. These decisions constitute a judgment about the relative danger and benefits of those locations. Using mobility data from a large sample of smartphones, nationally representative consumer preference surveys, and economic statistics, we measure the relative transmission reduction benefit and social cost of closing 26 categories of US locations. Our categories include types of shops, entertainments, and service providers. We rank categories by their trade-off of social benefits and transmission risk via dominance across 13 dimensions of risk and importance and through composite indexes. We find that, from February to March 2020, there were larger declines in visits to locations that our measures indicate should be closed first.
Recommended Citation
Benzell, S. G., Collis, A., & Nicolaides, C. (2020). Rationing social contact during the COVID-19 pandemic: Transmission risk and social benefits of US locations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 117(26), 14642-14644. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2008025117
Peer Reviewed
1
Copyright
The authors
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Included in
Behavioral Economics Commons, Business Analytics Commons, Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics Commons, Economic Theory Commons, Health Economics Commons, Other Business Commons, Other Economics Commons, Public Economics Commons
Comments
This article was originally published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, volume 117, issue 26, in year. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2008025117
This scholarship is part of the Chapman University COVID-19 Archives.