{"title":"The economic impact of social distancing: Evidence from state-collected data during the 1918 influenza pandemic","authors":"Benjamin Bridgman , Ryan Greenaway-McGrevy","doi":"10.1016/j.eeh.2023.101531","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>What are the long-run economic impacts of the policy responses to control pandemics? We investigate this question by exploiting state-collected data spanning one of the most consequential global pandemics in centuries, the 1918 influenza pandemic. Specifically, we use a difference-in-differences framework to examine the effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), ultimately finding no long-run impact of NPIs on employment, positive or negative. Employment trends prior to 1918 suggest that World War One is an important confounding factor in analyses of the pandemic, since cities with tighter NPIs grew rapidly between 1914 and 1918. We identify new control variables that account for war production and find that social distancing did not have long run employment impacts. The evidence underscores the importance of accounting for confounding economic and policy factors for understanding the impact of pandemics on economic outcomes.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47413,"journal":{"name":"Explorations in Economic History","volume":"90 ","pages":"Article 101531"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6000,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Explorations in Economic History","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014498323000256","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
What are the long-run economic impacts of the policy responses to control pandemics? We investigate this question by exploiting state-collected data spanning one of the most consequential global pandemics in centuries, the 1918 influenza pandemic. Specifically, we use a difference-in-differences framework to examine the effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), ultimately finding no long-run impact of NPIs on employment, positive or negative. Employment trends prior to 1918 suggest that World War One is an important confounding factor in analyses of the pandemic, since cities with tighter NPIs grew rapidly between 1914 and 1918. We identify new control variables that account for war production and find that social distancing did not have long run employment impacts. The evidence underscores the importance of accounting for confounding economic and policy factors for understanding the impact of pandemics on economic outcomes.
期刊介绍：
Explorations in Economic History provides broad coverage of the application of economic analysis to historical episodes. The journal has a tradition of innovative applications of theory and quantitative techniques, and it explores all aspects of economic change, all historical periods, all geographical locations, and all political and social systems. The journal includes papers by economists, economic historians, demographers, geographers, and sociologists. Explorations in Economic History is the only journal where you will find "Essays in Exploration." This unique department alerts economic historians to the potential in a new area of research, surveying the recent literature and then identifying the most promising issues to pursue.
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