IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/popmgt/v31y2022i5p2289-2305.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Stay at home to stay safe: Effectiveness of stay‐at‐home orders in containing the COVID‐19 pandemic

Author

Listed:
  • Guihua Wang

Abstract

Since the outbreak of the COVID‐19 pandemic, the effectiveness of stay‐at‐home orders implemented in many states in the United States has been the subject of ongoing debate. Whereas proponents believe these orders help reduce person‐to‐person contact and therefore the spread of the pandemic, opponents argue these orders are unnecessary and ineffective. In this study, we use eight states that did not implement the orders as a control group and six neighboring states that did implement them as a treatment group to estimate the effectiveness of stay‐at‐home orders. We find that although residents in both groups were staying at home even before the implementation of any order, these orders reduced the number of new COVID‐19 cases by 7.6%. To understand the mechanisms behind these results, we compare the mobility of residents in the control and treatment groups over time. We find stay‐at‐home orders significantly reduced residents' mobility at grocery stores and pharmacies, transit stations, workplaces, and retail and recreation locations. The results of this study are useful to policymakers in conducting cost–benefit analyses of back‐to‐work plans versus stay‐at‐home policies and deciding whether to implement, extend, lift, or reimplement stay‐at‐home orders amid a pandemic such as COVID‐19. Our results are also useful to researchers because we highlight the importance of correcting for potential selection issues. As we illustrate in this study, ignoring potential selection issues would lead to the wrong conclusion that stay‐at‐home orders increase the number of new COVID‐19 cases.

Suggested Citation

  • Guihua Wang, 2022. "Stay at home to stay safe: Effectiveness of stay‐at‐home orders in containing the COVID‐19 pandemic," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 31(5), pages 2289-2305, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:popmgt:v:31:y:2022:i:5:p:2289-2305
    DOI: 10.1111/poms.13685
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/poms.13685
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/poms.13685?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Karthik Muralidharan & Nishith Prakash, 2017. "Cycling to School: Increasing Secondary School Enrollment for Girls in India," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 321-350, July.
    2. Sandra E. Black, 1999. "Do Better Schools Matter? Parental Valuation of Elementary Education," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(2), pages 577-599.
    3. Card, David & Krueger, Alan B, 1994. "Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast-Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(4), pages 772-793, September.
    4. David Dranove & Daniel Kessler & Mark McClellan & Mark Satterthwaite, 2003. "Is More Information Better? The Effects of "Report Cards" on Health Care Providers," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 111(3), pages 555-588, June.
    5. David S. Lee & Thomas Lemieux, 2010. "Regression Discontinuity Designs in Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(2), pages 281-355, June.
    6. Cooper, Ian & Mondal, Argha & Antonopoulos, Chris G., 2020. "A SIR model assumption for the spread of COVID-19 in different communities," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    7. Patrick Bayer & Fernando Ferreira & Robert McMillan, 2007. "A Unified Framework for Measuring Preferences for Schools and Neighborhoods," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115(4), pages 588-638, August.
    8. Eli Ben‐Michael & Avi Feller & Jesse Rothstein, 2022. "Synthetic controls with staggered adoption," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 84(2), pages 351-381, April.
    9. Jeong‐ha (Cath) Oh & Zhiqiang (Eric) Zheng & Indranil R. Bardhan, 2018. "Sooner or Later? Health Information Technology, Length of Stay, and Readmission Risk," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 27(11), pages 2038-2053, November.
    10. Raymond Lei Fan & Ming Zhao & David Xiaosong Peng, 2021. "Differentiating Interhospital Transfer Types: Varied Impacts and Diverging Coordination Strategies," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 30(10), pages 3657-3678, October.
    11. Fang, Hanming & Wang, Long & Yang, Yang, 2020. "Human mobility restrictions and the spread of the Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in China," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    12. Richard C. Larson, 2007. "Simple Models of Influenza Progression Within a Heterogeneous Population," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 55(3), pages 399-412, June.
    13. Alberto Abadie & Javier Gardeazabal, 2003. "The Economic Costs of Conflict: A Case Study of the Basque Country," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 113-132, March.
    14. Ali Ekici & Pınar Keskinocak & Julie L. Swann, 2014. "Modeling Influenza Pandemic and Planning Food Distribution," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 16(1), pages 11-27, February.
    15. Peng Sun & Liu Yang & Francis de Véricourt, 2009. "Selfish Drug Allocation for Containing an International Influenza Pandemic at the Onset," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 57(6), pages 1320-1332, December.
    16. Neil M. Ferguson & Derek A.T. Cummings & Simon Cauchemez & Christophe Fraser & Steven Riley & Aronrag Meeyai & Sopon Iamsirithaworn & Donald S. Burke, 2005. "Strategies for containing an emerging influenza pandemic in Southeast Asia," Nature, Nature, vol. 437(7056), pages 209-214, September.
    17. Thomas J. Holmes, 1998. "The Effect of State Policies on the Location of Manufacturing: Evidence from State Borders," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(4), pages 667-705, August.
    18. Elisa F. Long & Eike Nohdurft & Stefan Spinler, 2018. "Spatial Resource Allocation for Emerging Epidemics: A Comparison of Greedy, Myopic, and Dynamic Policies," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 20(2), pages 181-198, May.
    19. Abadie, Alberto & Diamond, Alexis & Hainmueller, Jens, 2010. "Synthetic Control Methods for Comparative Case Studies: Estimating the Effect of California’s Tobacco Control Program," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 105(490), pages 493-505.
    20. Robert J. Batt & Diwas S. KC & Bradley R. Staats & Brian W. Patterson, 2019. "The Effects of Discrete Work Shifts on a Nonterminating Service System," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 28(6), pages 1528-1544, June.
    21. Karen M. Pence, 2006. "Foreclosing on Opportunity: State Laws and Mortgage Credit," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 88(1), pages 177-182, February.
    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. Herby, Jonas & Jonung, Lars & Hanke, Steve, 2022. "A Literature Review and Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Lockdowns on COVID-19 Mortality," Studies in Applied Economics 200, The Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise.
    2. Choudhury, Nishat Alam & Ramkumar, M. & Schoenherr, Tobias & Singh, Shalabh, 2023. "The role of operations and supply chain management during epidemics and pandemics: Potential and future research opportunities," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 175(C).
    3. Hu, Jin & Hu, Daning & Yang, Xuan & Chau, Michael, 2023. "The impacts of lockdown on open source software contributions during the COVID-19 pandemic," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(10).
    4. Suresh P. Sethi & Sushil Gupta & Vipin K. Agrawal & Vijay K. Agrawal, 2022. "Nobel laureates’ contributions to and impacts on operations management," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 31(12), pages 4283-4303, December.

    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. Baum-Snow, Nathaniel & Ferreira, Fernando, 2015. "Causal Inference in Urban and Regional Economics," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 3-68, Elsevier.
    2. Anil Kumar, 2018. "Do Restrictions on Home Equity Extraction Contribute to Lower Mortgage Defaults? Evidence from a Policy Discontinuity at the Texas Border," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 10(1), pages 268-297, February.
    3. David Slichter, 2023. "The employment effects of the minimum wage: A selection ratio approach to measuring treatment effects," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(3), pages 334-357, April.
    4. Mauricio Villamizar‐Villegas & Freddy A. Pinzon‐Puerto & Maria Alejandra Ruiz‐Sanchez, 2022. "A comprehensive history of regression discontinuity designs: An empirical survey of the last 60 years," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(4), pages 1130-1178, September.
    5. Frölich, Markus & Lechner, Michael, 2010. "Exploiting Regional Treatment Intensity for the Evaluation of Labor Market Policies," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 105(491), pages 1014-1029.
    6. Berger, Melissa & Fellner-Röhling, Gerlinde & Sausgruber, Rupert & Traxler, Christian, 2016. "Higher taxes, more evasion? Evidence from border differentials in TV license fees," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 74-86.
    7. Guido W. Imbens & Jeffrey M. Wooldridge, 2009. "Recent Developments in the Econometrics of Program Evaluation," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(1), pages 5-86, March.
    8. Guido W. Imbens, 2020. "Potential Outcome and Directed Acyclic Graph Approaches to Causality: Relevance for Empirical Practice in Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 58(4), pages 1129-1179, December.
    9. Daniel Aaronson & Daniel Hartley & Bhashkar Mazumder, 2021. "The Effects of the 1930s HOLC "Redlining" Maps," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 13(4), pages 355-392, November.
    10. Markus Frölich & Michael Lechner, 2004. "Regional treatment intensity as an instrument for the evaluation of labour market policies," University of St. Gallen Department of Economics working paper series 2004 2004-08, Department of Economics, University of St. Gallen.
    11. Daniele Bondonio, 2019. "Does the Running Variable Matter? A Second Look at Discontinuity Designs for Evaluating Regional Economic Development and Business Incentive Policies," Economics Working Paper from Condorcet Center for political Economy at CREM-CNRS 2019-02-ccr, Condorcet Center for political Economy.
    12. Pei Li & Yi Lu & Tuan-Heww Sng, 2017. "Artificial Administrative Boundaries: Evidence from China," CEH Discussion Papers 09, Centre for Economic History, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.
    13. Felfe, Christina & Lechner, Michael & Thiemann, Petra, 2016. "After-school care and parents' labor supply," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 64-75.
    14. Dmitry Arkhangelsky & Guido Imbens, 2023. "Causal Models for Longitudinal and Panel Data: A Survey," Papers 2311.15458, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2024.
    15. Susan Athey & Guido W. Imbens, 2017. "The State of Applied Econometrics: Causality and Policy Evaluation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(2), pages 3-32, Spring.
    16. Huber, Martin, 2019. "An introduction to flexible methods for policy evaluation," FSES Working Papers 504, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Freiburg/Fribourg Switzerland.
    17. Xiaoyan Xu & Suresh P. Sethi & Sai‐Ho Chung & Tsan‐Ming Choi, 2023. "Reforming global supply chain management under pandemics: The GREAT‐3Rs framework," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 32(2), pages 524-546, February.
    18. Guido Blasio & Samuele Poy, 2017. "THE IMPACT OF LOCAL WAGE REGULATION ON EMPLOYMENT: A BORDER ANALYSIS FROM ITALY IN THE 1950s," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(1), pages 48-74, January.
    19. Eric James Stokan, 2019. "An Estimate of the Local Economic Impact of State-Level Earned Income Tax Credits," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 33(3), pages 170-186, August.
    20. Agarwal, Sumit & Ambrose, Brent W. & Diop, Moussa, 2022. "Minimum wage increases and eviction risk," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).

    More about this item

    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:bla:popmgt:v:31:y:2022:i:5:p:2289-2305. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1937-5956 .

    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.