IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2307.00251.html

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. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. Noémi Kreif & Richard Grieve & Dominik Hangartner & Alex James Turner & Silviya Nikolova & Matt Sutton, 2016. "Examination of the Synthetic Control Method for Evaluating Health Policies with Multiple Treated Units," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(12), pages 1514-1528, December.
    4. 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.
    5. 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.
    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.
    7. 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.
    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. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. Tomasz Serwach, 2022. "The European Union and within-country income inequalities. The case of the New Member States," Working Papers hal-03548416, HAL.
    4. David Gilchrist & Thomas Emery & Nuno Garoupa & Rok Spruk, 2023. "Synthetic Control Method: A tool for comparative case studies in economic history," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(2), pages 409-445, April.
    5. Dmitry Arkhangelsky & Guido Imbens, 2023. "Causal Models for Longitudinal and Panel Data: A Survey," Papers 2311.15458, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2024.
    6. Jianfei Cao & Shirley Lu & Hang Wu, 2019. "Synthetic Control Inference for Staggered Adoption," Papers 1912.06320, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2025.
    7. Justin C. Wiltshire, 2023. "Walmart Supercenters and Monopsony Power: How A Large, Low-Wage Employer Impacts Local Labor Markets," Department Discussion Papers 2304, Department of Economics, University of Victoria.
    8. Justin C. Contat & William M. Doerner & Robert N. Renner & Malcolm J. Rogers, 2025. "Measuring Price Effects from Disasters Using Public Data: A Case Study of Hurricane Ian," Journal of Real Estate Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(2), pages 170-217, April.
    9. Philippe Loyson & Rianne Luijendijk & Sweder van Wijnbergen, 2023. "The pricing of climate transition risk in Europe’s equity market," Working Papers 788, DNB.
    10. repec:ags:aaea22:335971 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Saeyoung Rho & Cyrus Illick & Samhitha Narasipura & Alberto Abadie & Daniel Hsu & Vishal Misra, 2026. "Time-Aware Synthetic Control," Papers 2601.03099, arXiv.org.
    12. Justin C. Wiltsire, 2024. "Allsynth: (Stacked) Synthetic Control Bias-Correction Utilities for Stata," Department Discussion Papers 2409, Department of Economics, University of Victoria.
    13. 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.
    14. Clarke, Damian & Pailañir, Daniel & Athey, Susan & Imbens, Guido W., 2023. "Synthetic Difference-in-Differences Estimation," IZA Discussion Papers 15907, IZA Network @ LISER.
    15. Roxanne Kovacs & Maurice Dunaiski & Janne Tukiainen, 2023. "The effect of compulsory face mask policies on community mobility in Germany," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 125(4), pages 1027-1055, October.
    16. Emery, Thomas & Mélon, Lela & Spruk, Rok, 2023. "Does e-procurement matter for economic growth? Subnational evidence from Australia," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 318-334.
    17. Chan, Ho Fai & Gangl, Katharina & Supriyadi, Mohammad Wangsit & Torgler, Benno, 2023. "The effects of increased monitoring on high wealth individuals: Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment in Indonesia," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 215(C), pages 244-267.
    18. Dmitry Arkhangelsky & David Hirshberg, 2023. "Large-Sample Properties of the Synthetic Control Method under Selection on Unobservables," Papers 2311.13575, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2023.
    19. 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.).
    20. 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.
    21. Youngho Kim, 2024. "Payments for Ecosystem Services Programs and Climate Change Adaptation in Agriculture," Economics Series Working Papers 1054, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.

    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.