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Browsing by Author "Wing, Coady"
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Item Back to Business and (Re)employing Workers? Labor Market Activity During State COVID-19 Reopenings(National Bureau of Economic Research, 2020-06) Cheng, Wei; Carlin, Patrick; Carroll, Joanna; Gupta, Sumedha; Rojas, Felipe Lozano; Montenovo, Laura; Nguyen, Thuy D.; Schmutte, Ian M.; Scrivner, Olga; Simon, Kosali I.; Wing, Coady; Weinberg, Bruce; Department of Economics, IU School of Liberal ArtsWe study the effect of state reopening policies on a large set of labor market indicators through May 2020 to: (1) understand the recent increase in employment using longitudinal as well as cross-sectional data, (2) assess the likely trajectory of reemployment going forward, and (3) investigate the strength of job matches that were disrupted by COVID-19. Estimates from event studies and difference-in-difference regressions suggest that some of the recent increases in employment activity, as measured by cellphone data on work-related mobility, internet searches related to employment, and new and continuing unemployment insurance claims, were likely related to state reopenings, often predating actual reopening dates somewhat. We provide suggestive evidence that increases in employment stem from people returning to their prior jobs: reopenings are only weakly related to job postings, and longitudinal CPS data show that large shares of the unemployed-on-layoff and employed-but-absent in April who transitioned to employment in May remain in the same industry or occupation. Longitudinal CPS estimates further show declines in reemployment probabilities with time away from work. Taken together, these estimates suggest that employment relationships are durable in the short run, but raise concerns that employment gains requiring new employment matches may not be as rapid.Item Effects of social distancing policy on labor market outcomes(Wiley, 2023) Gupta, Sumedha; Montenovo, Laura; Nguyen, Thuy; Lozano-Rojas, Felipe; Schmutte, Ian; Simon, Kosali; Weinberg, Bruce A.; Wing, Coady; Economics, School of Liberal ArtsUS workers receive unemployment benefits if they lose their job, but not for reduced working hours. In alignment with the benefits incentives, we find that the labor market responded to COVID-19 and related closure-policies mostly on the extensive (12 pp outright job loss) margin. Exploiting timing variation in state closure-policies, difference-in-differences (DiD) estimates show, between March 12 and April 12, 2020, employment rate fell by 1.7 pp for every 10 extra days of state stay-at-home orders (SAH), with little effect on hours worked/earnings among those employed. Forty percentage of the unemployment was due to a nationwide shock, rest due to social-distancing policies, particularly among "non-essential" workers.Item Impacts of state COVID-19 reopening policy on human mobility and mixing behavior(Wiley, 2021) Nguyen, Thuy D.; Gupta, Sumedha; Andersen, Martin S.; Bento, Ana I.; Simon, Kosali I.; Wing, Coady; Economics, School of Liberal ArtsThis study quantifies the effect of the 2020 state COVID economic activity reopening policies on daily mobility and mixing behavior, adding to the economic literature on individual responses to public health policy that addresses public contagion risks. We harness cellular device signal data and the timing of reopening plans to provide an assessment of the extent to which human mobility and physical proximity in the United States respond to the reversal of state closure policies. We observe substantial increases in mixing activities, 13.56% at 4 days and 48.65% at 4 weeks, following reopening events. Echoing a theme from the literature on the 2020 closures, mobility outside the home increased on average prior to these state actions. Furthermore, the largest increases in mobility occurred in states that were early adopters of closure measures and hard-hit by the pandemic, suggesting that psychological fatigue is an important barrier to implementation of closure policies extending for prolonged periods of time.Item Impacts of State Reopening Policy on Human Mobility(National Bureau of Economic Research, 2020-05) Nguyen, Thuy D.; Gupta, Sumedha; Andersen, Martin; Bento, Ana; Simon, Kosali I.; Wing, Coady; O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, IU & IUPUIThis study quantifies the effect of state reopening policies on daily mobility, travel, and mixing behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic. We harness cell device signal data to examine the effects of the timing and pace of reopening plans in different states. We quantify the increase in mobility patterns during the reopening phase by a broad range of cell-device-based metrics. Soon (four days) after reopening, we observe a 6% to 8% mobility increase. In addition, we find that temperature and precipitation are strongly associated with increased mobility across counties. The mobility measures that reflect visits to a greater variety of locations responds the most to reopening policies, while total time in vs. outside the house remains unchanged. The largest increases in mobility occur in states that were late adopters of closure measures, suggesting that closure policies may have represented more of a binding constraint in those states. Together, these four observations provide an assessment of the extent to which people in the U.S. are resuming movement and physical proximity as the COVID-19 pandemic continues.Item Tracking Public and Private Responses to the Covid-19 Epidemic: Evidence from State and Local Government Actions(University of Chicago Press, 2021) Gupta, Sumedha; Nguyen, Thuy Dieu; Lozano-Rojas, Felipe; Raman, Shyam; Lee, Byungkyu; Bento, Ana; Simon, Kosali Ilayperuma; Wing, Coady; Economics, School of Liberal ArtsThis paper examines the determinants of social distancing during the shutdown phase of the COVID-19 epidemic. We classify state and local government actions, and we study multiple proxies for social distancing based on data from smart devices. Mobility fell substantially in all states, even ones that did not adopt major distancing mandates. Most of the fall in mobility occurred prior to the most stringent sanctions against movement, such as stay-at-home laws. However, we find evidence suggesting that state and local policies did have an independent effect on mobility even after the large initial reductions occurred. Event studies show that early and information-focused actions such as first case announcements, emergency declarations, and school closures reduced mobility by 1–5 percent after five days. Between March 1 and April 14, average time spent at home grew from 9.1 hours to 13.9 hours. We find, for example, that without state emergency declarations, hours at home would have been 11.3 hours in April, suggesting that 55 percent of the growth is associated with policy and 45 percent is associated with (non-policy) trends. State and local government actions induced changes in mobility on top of a large and private response across all states to the prevailing knowledge of public health risks.Item Vaccinations Against COVID-19 May Have Averted up to 140,000 Deaths in the United States(Project HOPE, 2021) Gupta, Sumedha; Cantor, Jonathan; Simon, Kosali I.; Bento, Ana I.; Wing, Coady; Whaley, Christopher M.; Economics, School of Liberal ArtsCOVID-19 vaccination campaigns continue in the United States, with the expectation that vaccines will slow transmission of the virus, save lives, and enable a return to normal life in due course. However, the extent to which faster vaccine administration has affected COVID-19-related deaths is unknown. We assessed the association between US state-level vaccination rates and COVID-19 deaths during the first five months of vaccine availability. We estimated that by May 9, 2021, the US vaccination campaign was associated with a reduction of 139,393 COVID-19 deaths. The association varied in different states. In New York, for example, vaccinations led to an estimated 11.7 fewer COVID-19 deaths per 10,000, whereas Hawaii observed the smallest reduction, with an estimated 1.1 fewer deaths per 10,000. Overall, our analysis suggests that the early COVID-19 vaccination campaign was associated with reductions in COVID-19 deaths. As of May 9, 2021, reductions in COVID-19 deaths associated with vaccines had translated to value of statistical life benefit ranging between $625 billion and $1.4 trillion.Item What can we learn about SARS-CoV-2 prevalence from testing and hospital data?(Cornell University, 2020-08-01) Sacks, Daniel W.; Menachemi, Nir; Embi, Peter; Wing, Coady; Kelley School of Business - IndianapolisMeasuring the prevalence of active SARS-CoV-2 infections is difficult because tests are conducted on a small and non-random segment of the population. But people admitted to the hospital for non-COVID reasons are tested at very high rates, even though they do not appear to be at elevated risk of infection. This sub-population may provide valuable evidence on prevalence in the general population. We estimate upper and lower bounds on the prevalence of the virus in the general population and the population of non-COVID hospital patients under weak assumptions on who gets tested, using Indiana data on hospital inpatient records linked to SARS-CoV-2 virological tests. The non-COVID hospital population is tested fifty times as often as the general population. By mid-June, we estimate that prevalence was between 0.01 and 4.1 percent in the general population and between 0.6 to 2.6 percent in the non-COVID hospital population. We provide and test conditions under which this non-COVID hospitalization bound is valid for the general population. The combination of clinical testing data and hospital records may contain much more information about the state of the epidemic than has been previously appreciated. The bounds we calculate for Indiana could be constructed at relatively low cost in many other states.