Staggered Adoption of Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions to Contain COVID-19 Across U.S. Counties

Keystone's COVID-19 NPI dataset, launched in April 2020, continues to be leveraged across a spectrum of scientists, public policy experts, data scientists, and researchers world-wide. In this recent Johns Hopkins Carey Business School Research paper (No. 20-06), learn how the authors' work estimates direct and spillover effects of social distancing measures intended to slow the spread of COVID-19 using mobility indicators based on cellphone data. Abstract. We estimate direct and spillover effects of social distancing measures intended to slow the spread of COVID-19 at the U.S. county level using mobility indicators based on cellphone data. We find that spillover effects range between a third and a half of the direct effect depending on the particular outcome or policy considered. Our results suggest that decentralized NPI decisions, which does not internalize externalities generated on surrounding locations, could result in lower NPI implementation and weaker reduction in mobility, and hence more personal contacts and interactions in leisure and work activities, which are the main driver of the COVID-19 transmission. Authors include: Vadim Elenev (Johns Hopkins Carey Business School), Luis Quintero (Johns Hopkins University - Carey Business School), Alessandro Rebucci (Johns Hopkins University - Carey Business School; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)), and Emilia Simeonova (Johns Hopkins University - Carey Business School).Read the entire research paper here.