University of Chicago paper shows stay-at-home orders made the pandemic worse
Q1 2021 hedge fund letters, conferences and more
A new paper published by the University of Chicago and soon by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), shows that after the first month of the pandemic, stay-at-home orders actually made the pandemic worse rather than better.
“Within a month, employers implemented prevention protocols—screening, masks, better airflow, etc.—much more than households did,” explains University of Chicago Economics Professor Casey Mulligan, who served as the Chief Economic Adviser to the White House Council of Economic Advisers from 2018-19.
“Data show that as a result, workers have been 4-5 times less safe outside their workplace than inside it. While stay-at-home continues to be pushed as promoting public health, nobody is checking the data which say the opposite,” says Mulligan. His new paper is entitled “The Backward Art of Slowing the Spread? Congregation Efficiencies during COVID-19.”
