Both containment and economic policies were intensely debated up to the widespread availability of vaccinations. Health and containment policies were controversial because they were claimed to lower economic activity to prevent the spread of COVID-19, but their ability to curb the disease was not fully known. And evaluating the trade-off between health and the economy was difficult in real time. Likewise, people asked whether economic support policies were generous enough to address the economic cost of the pandemic or overly generous and too costly.
In Famiglietti and Leibovici (2021), we use a statistical model to tease out how COVID-19's spread, government policies, and economic activity affect each other. We do this by looking at cross-state variation in the intensity of, timing of, and response to the pandemic. For example, we exploit the fact that some states increased health containment measures after a rise in COVID-19 infections and compare the path of COVID-19's spread and economic activity in that state with states that left policy unchanged.
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- "I am Dr. Rick Bright, a career public servant and a scientist who has spent 25 years of my career focused on addressing pandemic outbreaks"