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
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: Suggested Citation