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Do Stay-at-Home Orders Cause People to Stay at Home? Effects of Stay-at-Home Orders on Consumer Behavior

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Abstract

We link the county-level rollout of stay-at-home orders during the Covid-19 pandemic to anonymized cell phone records and consumer spending data. We document three patterns. First, stay-at-home orders caused people to stay home: county-level measures of mobility declined 6–7% within two days of when the stay-at-home order went into effect. Second, stay-at-home orders caused large reductions in spending in sectors associated with mobility: small businesses and large retail chains. Third, we estimate fairly uniform responses to stay-at-home orders across the country; effects do not vary by county-level income, political leanings, or urban/rural status.

Suggested Citation

  • Diane Alexander & Ezra Karger, 2020. "Do Stay-at-Home Orders Cause People to Stay at Home? Effects of Stay-at-Home Orders on Consumer Behavior," Working Paper Series WP-2020-12, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, revised 19 Aug 2021.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedhwp:92745
    DOI: 10.21033/wp-2020-12
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Covid-19; stay-at-home orders; consumer spending; high-frequency data;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A19 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Other
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • R20 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - General
    • R50 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Regional Government Analysis - - - General

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