Drivers of COVID-19 Stay at Home Orders: Epidemiologic, Economic, or Political Concerns?

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Drivers of COVID-19 Stay at Home Orders: Epidemiologic, Economic, or Political Concerns? Lea-Rachel Kosnik 1

& Allen Bellas

2

Received: 27 June 2020 / Accepted: 11 August 2020/ # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

Abstract

What factors affected whether or not a U.S. state governor issued a state-wide stay-at-home order in response to the COVID-19 pandemic of early 2020? Once issued, what factors affected the length of this stay-at-home order? Using duration analysis, we test a number of epidemiological, economic, and political factors for their impact on a state governor’s decision to ultimately issue, and then terminate, blanket stay-at-home orders across the 50 U.S. states. Results indicate that while epidemiologic and economic variables had some impact on the delay to initiation and length of the stay-at-home orders, political factors dominated both the initiation and ultimate duration of stay-at-home orders across the United States. Keywords COVID-19 . Pandemic . Stay at home order . Public policy . Health . Coronavirus JEL Classification H7 . I1

Introduction Beginning in mid-March, 2020, the majority of governors in states across the U.S. began issuing stay-at-home orders due to the suddenly escalating COVID-19 pandemic. The start and end dates of these orders varied, however, with some states (eight in all) never issuing blanket orders at all.1 What explains the timing of these orders, including their wide variability? 1 Some, like Oklahoma, had orders issued by mayors at the city level, while others, like Arkansas, issued alternative executive orders related to COVID-19.

* Lea-Rachel Kosnik [email protected] Allen Bellas [email protected]

1

Department of Economics, University of Missouri-St. Louis, St. Louis, MO 63121-4499, USA

2

College of Management, Metropolitan State University, Minneapolis, MN 55403, USA

Economics of Disasters and Climate Change

There is an assumed tradeoff embodied in the issuing of a stay-at-home order. Its primary intent is to protect lives and reduce peak infection rates (i.e. “flattening the curve”), but it invariably comes with the tradeoff of reduced short-run economic activity.2 A governor is presumably concerned with both. In the U.S., which concern dominated in influencing the timing of both issuing, and then ending, these stay at home orders? We explore two hypotheses: first, that the variation in policy response was driven by various epidemiological and economic factors, including population density, age of citizenry, and degree of economic activity. Alternatively, we explore the possibility that the stay at home orders were driven less by any sort of epidemiologic-economic tradeoff, but instead by politics, or ideology, with factors including governor’s party and percent of the state voting for Trump in 2016 affecting the time to response in issuing, and later lifting, the stay-at-home orders. Of course, both sets of variables could have some effect on response time and duration of orders, but it would be useful to know if a certain set of factors ma