Physical mobility under stay-at-home orders: A comparative analysis of movement restrictions between the U.S. and Europe

During the COVID-19 pandemic, both the U.S. and Europe have issued movement restrictions with the exception of visits to essential services, including groceries and pharmacies. Using Google's data on community mobility, I employ an event-study design to compare the effects of movement restrictions on physical mobility in the U.S. and Europe. I find that compared to Europe, the U.S. has higher levels of mobility related to visits to groceries and pharmacies and lower levels of the residential presence relative to baseline values, and the differences are not only statistically significant but also of large magnitudes. Such differences in post-restriction mobility are still significant between Europe and the U.S.’ early epicenters of COVID-19. The main results of this paper are robust to changes in samples and specifications. These findings suggest that movement restrictions appear to be less effective in the U.S., which have useful implications for health policy evaluation, pandemic forecasting, and economic recovery.