Stay-at-Home Orders More Effective on Virus Than Closing Businesses
- Economists say stay-at-home orders saved lives and jobs
- Paper presented at Brookings Institution forum in Washington
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Shelter-in-place orders by U.S. state and local governments did more to combat the spread of the coronavirus than business closures while destroying fewer jobs, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania said in a new study released Wednesday.
Interventions “that target individual behavior (such as stay-at-home orders) were more effective at reducing transmission at lower economic cost than those that target businesses,” economist Kent Smetters and analysts Alexander Arnon and John Ricco wrote.