COVID-19 Spread and Inter-County Travel: Daily Evidence from the U.S.

Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Forthcoming

22 Pages Posted: 6 Apr 2020 Last revised: 2 Nov 2020

See all articles by Hakan Yilmazkuday

Hakan Yilmazkuday

Florida International University (FIU) - Department of Economics

Date Written: October 9, 2020

Abstract

Daily data at the U.S. county level suggest that coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases and deaths are lower in counties where a higher share of people have stayed in the same county (or travelled less to other counties). This observation is tested formally by using a difference-in-difference design controlling for county-fixed effects and time-fixed effects, where weekly changes in COVID-19 cases or deaths are regressed on weekly changes in the share of people who have stayed in the same county during the previous 14 days. A counterfactual analysis based on the formal estimation results suggests that staying in the same county has the potential of reducing total weekly COVID-19 cases and deaths in the U.S. as much as by 139,503 and by 23,445, respectively.

Keywords: COVID-19, Coronavirus, Same-County Stayers, County-Level Investigation, U.S.

JEL Classification: I10, I18, R41

Suggested Citation

Yilmazkuday, Hakan, COVID-19 Spread and Inter-County Travel: Daily Evidence from the U.S. (October 9, 2020). Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Forthcoming , Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3568838 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3568838

Hakan Yilmazkuday (Contact Author)

Florida International University (FIU) - Department of Economics ( email )

11200 SW 8th Street
Miami, FL 33199
United States

HOME PAGE: http://faculty.fiu.edu/~hyilmazk/

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