# **I. Introduction**

Understanding the determinants of social distancing is central to addressing both the medical and economic aspects of COVID-19.<sup>4</sup> On the one hand, reducing interactions among people is critical to reducing the propagation and a variety of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), such as closure of nonessential businesses, stay-at-home orders, or school closings, have been put in place to this end, with some success.<sup>5</sup> While there is controversy around whether this should be the goal in developing countries as well (BarnettHowell and Mobarak 2020, Loayza 2020), there is also concern about whether such measures would work: government capabilities to enforce may be weaker, and resistance may be higher since the trade-off with livelihood is harsher. At the other extreme of the cycle - where the debate is when to loosen NPIs as it is in several advanced countries – preliminary evidence from Wuhan suggests that when opened, mobility and economic activity may not respond quickly.<sup>6</sup> Similarly, recent polls suggesting that 58% of Americans are concerned that restrictions will be lifted too soon raise the question of how much of an impact opening will have in practice and hence the shape of the recovery, whether V or U.<sup>7</sup> This paper uses Google mobility data to explore which factors are proving important during the 2020 COVID19 outbreak in the United States and globally. In all but the poorest countries, it confirms that NPIs can be effective, but that voluntary de-mobilization on the part of the population is much more important,-driven by fear or perhaps a sense of social responsibility. This suggests that much social distancing will happen regardless of the presence of restrictions and that NPIs may often function more like a coordinating device among increasingly predisposed individuals than repressive measures per se. We also confirm a more direct link of this voluntary effect using data on restaurant reservations in the United States and movie releases and revenues in Sweden and show that these, too, experience most of their fall before any imposition of NPIs. Overall, the

> 4 There are three margins upon which societies can work to reduce the death toll.  1.  Detect and quarantine so the disease never gets a foothold.  2.  Once established, reduce social mobility to mitigate the spread (reduce the R factor).  3. Increase the capability to treat the sick. On the third, Favero (2020) notes that limitations on ICU beds led to the extremely high death rate in Lombardy.  In practice, developing countries have far less capability to treat- 10 African countries have no respirators.https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/18/world/africa/africa-coronavirus- <u>ventilators.html?referringSource=articleShare</u> If northern Italy could not ramp up sufficiently enough along this dimension, it is highly unlikely that most poor countries can. On the first, many advanced countries have missed the window to detect and quarantine and again, this may be more challenging in the developing world.

> 5 See Chen and Qiu (2020), Gonzalez-Eira and Niepelt (2020) for conceptual treatments of optimal shutdown policies. Hartl et al (2020) find for Germany that growth rates of Covid-19 cases fell 50% as a result of German restrictions to shut down schools, stadiums and eventually many restaurants and shops. See Baldwin and Weder de Mauro (2020) for a compilation of recent thinking on Covid Economics.

> 6 <u>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-15/wuhan-s-life-after-lockdown-isn-t-business-as-usual?</u>

> 7 The NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll was conducted between April 13 and April 15 among a sample of 900 registered voters.

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