IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2307.00251.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Local Eviction Moratoria and the Spread of COVID-19

Author

Listed:
  • Julia Hatamyar
  • Christopher F. Parmeter

Abstract

At various stages during the initial onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, various US states and local municipalities enacted eviction moratoria. One of the main aims of these moratoria was to slow the spread of COVID-19 infections. We deploy a semiparametric difference-in-differences approach with an event study specification to test whether the lifting of these local moratoria led to an increase in COVID-19 cases and deaths. Our main findings, across a range of specifications, are inconclusive regarding the impact of the moratoria - especially after accounting for the number of actual evictions and conducting the analysis at the county level. We argue that recently developed augmented synthetic control (ASCM) methods are more appropriate in this setting. Our ASCM results also suggest that the lifting of eviction moratoria had little to no impact on COVID-19 cases and deaths. Thus, it seems that eviction moratoria had little to no robust effect on reducing the spread of COVID-19 throwing into question its use as a non-pharmaceutical intervention.

Suggested Citation

  • Julia Hatamyar & Christopher F. Parmeter, 2023. "Local Eviction Moratoria and the Spread of COVID-19," Papers 2307.00251, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2307.00251
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2307.00251
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Peter D. Howe & Matto Mildenberger & Jennifer R. Marlon & Anthony Leiserowitz, 2015. "Geographic variation in opinions on climate change at state and local scales in the USA," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 5(6), pages 596-603, June.
    2. Kay Jowers & Christopher Timmins & Nrupen Bhavsar & Qihui Hu & Julia Marshall, 2021. "Housing Precarity & the COVID-19 Pandemic: Impacts of Utility Disconnection and Eviction Moratoria on Infections and Deaths Across US Counties," NBER Working Papers 28394, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. 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.
    4. Sun, Liyang & Abraham, Sarah, 2021. "Estimating dynamic treatment effects in event studies with heterogeneous treatment effects," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 225(2), pages 175-199.
    5. Matthew Desmond & Tracey Shollenberger, 2015. "Forced Displacement From Rental Housing: Prevalence and Neighborhood Consequences," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 52(5), pages 1751-1772, October.
    6. Alberto Abadie & Jérémy L’Hour, 2021. "A Penalized Synthetic Control Estimator for Disaggregated Data," Journal of the American Statistical Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 116(536), pages 1817-1834, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Damian Clarke & Daniel Paila~nir & Susan Athey & Guido Imbens, 2023. "Synthetic Difference In Differences Estimation," Papers 2301.11859, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2023.
    2. 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.
    3. Dmitry Arkhangelsky & Guido Imbens, 2023. "Causal Models for Longitudinal and Panel Data: A Survey," Papers 2311.15458, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2024.
    4. Kim, Youngho, 2023. "Payments for Ecosystem Services Programs and Climate Change Adaptation in Agriculture," 2023 Annual Meeting, July 23-25, Washington D.C. 335971, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    5. Joakim Weill, 2023. "Flood Risk Mapping and the Distributional Impacts of Climate Information," Working Papers 2023.10, FAERE - French Association of Environmental and Resource Economists.
    6. Joakim A. Weill, 2023. "Flood Risk Mapping and the Distributional Impacts of Climate Information," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2023-066, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    7. Manuel Funke & Moritz Schularick & Christoph Trebesch, 2023. "Populist Leaders and the Economy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 113(12), pages 3249-3288, December.
    8. Maximiliano Marzetti & Rok Spruk, 2023. "Long-Term Economic Effects of Populist Legal Reforms: Evidence from Argentina," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 65(1), pages 60-95, March.
    9. Davide Viviano & Jelena Bradic, 2019. "Synthetic learner: model-free inference on treatments over time," Papers 1904.01490, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2022.
    10. Dennis Shen & Peng Ding & Jasjeet Sekhon & Bin Yu, 2022. "Same Root Different Leaves: Time Series and Cross-Sectional Methods in Panel Data," Papers 2207.14481, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2022.
    11. Pérez, Jorge & Vial, Felipe & Zárate, Román, 2022. "Urban Transit Infrastructure: Spatial Mismatch and Labor Market Power," Research Department working papers 1992, CAF Development Bank Of Latinamerica.
    12. Di, Wenhua & Pattison, Nathaniel, 2023. "Industry Specialization and Small Business Lending," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    13. Michael Funke & Kadri Männasoo & Helery Tasane, 2023. "Regional Economic Impacts of the Øresund Cross-Border Fixed Link: Cui Bono?," CESifo Working Paper Series 10557, CESifo.
    14. Sugiyama, Yuri, 2022. "Can Soft Law Improve the Welfare of Sexual Minorities? The Case of Same-sex Partnership Policy in Japan," CEI Working Paper Series 2022-06, Center for Economic Institutions, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    15. Miquel Oliu-Barton & Bary S. R. Pradelski & Nicolas Woloszko & Lionel Guetta-Jeanrenaud & Philippe Aghion & Patrick Artus & Arnaud Fontanet & Philippe Martin & Guntram B. Wolff, 2022. "The effect of COVID certificates on vaccine uptake, health outcomes, and the economy," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-13, December.
    16. Hao, Shiming, 2021. "True structure change, spurious treatment effect? A novel approach to disentangle treatment effects from structure changes," MPRA Paper 108679, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Girma, Sourafel & Paton, David, 2022. "Is assisted suicide a substitute for unassisted suicide?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    18. Tomasz Serwach, 2023. "The European Union and within‐country income inequalities. The case of the new member states," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(7), pages 1890-1939, July.
    19. Kirill Borusyak & Xavier Jaravel & Jann Spiess, 2021. "Revisiting Event Study Designs: Robust and Efficient Estimation," Papers 2108.12419, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2024.
    20. Dave, Dhaval & Liang, Yang & Pesko, Michael F. & Phillips, Serena & Sabia, Joseph J., 2023. "Have recreational marijuana laws undermined public health progress on adult tobacco use?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:arx:papers:2307.00251. 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: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    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.