Rationing social contact during the COVID-19 pandemic: Transmission risk and social benefits of US locations
Name
2008025117.full.pdf
Size
1.27 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
6cf47ffdd59255b527770bf5a40af4ab
Author(s)
Benzell, Seth Gordon
Collis, Avinash
Nicolaides, Christos
Date Issued
June 2020
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Publisher
National Academy of Sciences
Citation
Benzell, Seth G. et al. "Rationing social contact during the COVID-19 pandemic: Transmission risk and social benefits of US locations. " Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (June 2020) © 2020 The Author(s)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
To prevent the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), some types of public spaces have been shut down while others remain open. These decisions constitute a judgment about the relative danger and benefits of those locations. Using mobility data from a large sample of smartphones, nationally representative consumer preference surveys, and economic statistics, we measure the relative transmission reduction benefit and social cost of closing 26 categories of US locations. Our categories include types of shops, entertainments, and service providers. We rank categories by their trade-off of social benefits and transmission risk via dominance across 13 dimensions of risk and importance and through composite indexes. We find that, from February to March 2020, there were larger declines in visits to locations that our measures indicate should be closed first.
MIT Department
Sloan School of Management
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2008025117
