IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pgph00/0000663.html

Financial relief policy and social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic

Author

Listed:
  • Cody Yu-Ling Hsiao
  • Stanley Iat-Meng Ko
  • Nan Zhou

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the effect of stimulus payments during the COVID-19 pandemic on the social distancing practices of their recipients. While the directed cash payments stipulated by the 2020 CARES Act were intended to mitigate the economic impact of closures imposed in response to the outbreak, we find that this relief may also have inadvertently contributed to the spread of the virus due to increased social activity. We find that, as the payments were sent out on a staggered weekly schedule, there was a corresponding spike in weekend traffic as indicated by a number of mobility metrics that measure social distancing, over and above the usual uptick expected from weekend shopping following receipt of the stimulus payments on Fridays. This preliminary study gives some indication that the economic benefits of the stimulus package may in fact be outweighed by the detrimental effects of looser social distancing practices prolonging the outbreak.

Suggested Citation

  • Cody Yu-Ling Hsiao & Stanley Iat-Meng Ko & Nan Zhou, 2022. "Financial relief policy and social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic," PLOS Global Public Health, Public Library of Science, vol. 2(6), pages 1-11, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pgph00:0000663
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgph.0000663
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/globalpublichealth/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgph.0000663
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/globalpublichealth/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pgph.0000663&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pgph.0000663?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. Shibamoto, Masahiko & Hayaki, Shoka & Ogisu, Yoshitaka, 2022. "COVID-19 infection spread and human mobility," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    2. Scott R. Baker & Robert A Farrokhnia & Steffen Meyer & Michaela Pagel & Constantine Yannelis, 2023. "Income, Liquidity, and the Consumption Response to the 2020 Economic Stimulus Payments," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 27(6), pages 2271-2304.
    3. Greg Kaplan & Benjamin Moll & Giovanni L. Violante, 2020. "The Great Lockdown and the Big Stimulus: Tracing the Pandemic Possibility Frontier for the U.S," NBER Working Papers 27794, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    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. Ren, Mengyao & Xu, Yang & Park, Sangwon & Huang, Xiao & Sun, Mengqi & Xia, Jizhe & Koh, Sun-Young, 2024. "Consumer spending during COVID-19 in a tourism city," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    2. Shunshun Shi & Lin Zhang & Ying Huang, 2025. "Indicating interdisciplinarity: towards a tentative taxonomy according to problem solving in COVID-19," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 130(12), pages 6879-6908, 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. Pongpitch Amatyakul & Panchanok Jumrustanasan & Pornchanok Tapkham, 2023. "What can 20 billion financial transactions tell us about the impacts of Covid-19 fiscal transfers?," BIS Working Papers 1130, Bank for International Settlements.
    2. James MacGee & Thomas Michael Pugh & Kurt See, 2022. "The heterogeneous effects of COVID‐19 on Canadian household consumption, debt and savings," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 55(S1), pages 54-87, February.
    3. Hackethal, Andreas & Weber, Annika, 2020. "Fiscal policies and household consumption during the COVID-19 pandemic: A review of early evidence," SAFE White Paper Series 76, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    4. Kanishka Misra & Vishal Singh & Qianyun (Poppy) Zhang, 2022. "Frontiers: Impact of Stay-at-Home-Orders and Cost-of-Living on Stimulus Response: Evidence from the CARES Act," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 41(2), pages 211-229, March.
    5. Goldfayn-Frank, Olga & Lewis, Vivien & Wehrhöfer, Nils, 2022. "Spending effects of child-related fiscal transfers," Discussion Papers 26/2022, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    6. Kikuchi, Junichi & Nagao, Ryoya & Nakazono, Yoshiyuki, 2023. "Expenditure responses to the COVID-19 pandemic," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    7. Lester C Hunt & Anqi Zhang & Shuonan Zhang, 2022. "Recession and Recovery of the Pandemic," Working Papers in Economics & Finance 2022-05, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth Business School, Economics and Finance Subject Group.
    8. Temesvary, Judit & Wei, Andrew, 2024. "Domestic lending and the pandemic: How does banks’ exposure to COVID-19 abroad affect their lending in the United States?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    9. Yuki SHIGETA, 2022. "A Continuous-Time Utility Maximization Problem with Borrowing Constraints in Macroeconomic Heterogeneous Agent Models:A Case of Regular Controls under Markov Chain Uncertainty," Discussion papers e-22-009, Graduate School of Economics , Kyoto University.
    10. Acharya, Viral & Jiang, Zhengyang & Richmond, Robert & von Thadden, Ernst-Ludwig, 2024. "International Policy Coordination in a Multisectoral Model of Trade and Health Policy," CEPR Discussion Papers 19149, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    11. Graham, James & Ozbilgin, Murat, 2021. "Age, industry, and unemployment risk during a pandemic lockdown," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    12. Houštecká, Anna & Koh, Dongya & Santaeulàlia-Llopis, Raül, 2021. "Contagion at work: Occupations, industries and human contact," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 200(C).
    13. Gopal K. Basak & Chandramauli Chakraborty & Pranab Kumar Das, 2021. "Optimal Lockdown Strategy in a Pandemic: An Exploratory Analysis for Covid-19," Papers 2109.02512, arXiv.org.
    14. Anna Sokolova, 2023. "Marginal Propensity to Consume and Unemployment: a Meta-analysis," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 51, pages 813-846, December.
    15. Dirk Niepelt & Mart n Gonzalez-Eiras, 2020. "Optimally Controlling an Epidemic," Diskussionsschriften dp2019, Universitaet Bern, Departement Volkswirtschaft.
    16. Hamish Low & Michaela Benzeval & Jon Burton & Thomas F. Crossley & Paul Fisher & Annette Jäckle & Brendan Read, 2020. "The Idiosyncratic Impact of an Aggregate Shock The Distributional Consequences of COVID-19," Economics Series Working Papers 911, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    17. Robin Greenwood & Toomas Laarits & Jeffrey Wurgler & Tarun Ramadorai, 2023. "Stock Market Stimulus," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 36(10), pages 4082-4112.
    18. Hausmann, Ricardo & Schetter, Ulrich, 2022. "Horrible trade-offs in a pandemic: Poverty, fiscal space, policy, and welfare," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 153(C).
    19. Daniel Rees, 2020. "What Comes Next?," BIS Working Papers 898, Bank for International Settlements.
    20. Cesar Salinas, 2021. "Epidemics and Informality in Developing Countries," CAEPR Working Papers 2021-002 Classification-E, Center for Applied Economics and Policy Research, Department of Economics, Indiana University Bloomington.

    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:plo:pgph00:0000663. 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: globalpubhealth (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/globalpublichealth .

    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.