This is interesting:
https://www.nber.org/papers/w27127.pdf
Short paper: what caused the sudden rise of unemployment? Was it a matter of how bad the pandemic was or the mitigation efforts made by the states? Rojas et al say it was the health shocks. People were already bailing out of work and businesses were already closing when the shutdown orders came and they were doing this nationwide, no matter what the epidemiological conditions in their state were. All the mitigation did was keep the contraction on pace.
Usual caveat: this hasn't faced peer review. On a quick read there's nothing wrong with the methods used, but I didn't read enough on the data to make me necessarily believe it.
Wow. They should all be fired and put out of a job. Who paid for that “research”?
For those who didn’t read, here is what they say in the abstract:
“
the historically unprecedented increase in new UI claims during the weeks of March 15-21 and March 22-28 was largely across-the-board and occurred in all states. This suggests most of the economic disruption was driven by the health shock itself.”
Huh? Why does it suggest that? How did they come up with that theory?
If you read the paper, they looked at the differences in unemployment claims by state and compared that to the number of cases and there wasn’t a correlation...in other words, they then conclude everyone just got scared and ran.
So really, the data shows the answer is the opposite. If our cases in South Carolina are a tiny fraction of New York, we wouldn’t have seen a similar decrease in economic activity but for the government shutting everything down. I’m not sure why they don’t see right in front of them that the data shows the opposite.
Where I live, no businesses were closing and people weren’t bailing back in early March. I don’t know of 1 single solitary business in the entire state that closed before the state told them to close. The whole country just about shut down at the same time. The case differences are largely a population density/mass transit/social distancing adherence thing.
This paper smells like a “not my fault” butt covering exercise. I look forward to the peer reviews ripping them a new behiner LOL.