When Local Governments' Stay-at-Home Orders Meet the White House's"Opening Up America Again"

Mousavi, Reza; Gu, Bin

On April 16th, The White House launched"Opening up America Again"(OuAA) campaign while many U.S. counties had stay-at-home orders in place. We created a panel data set of 1,563 U.S. counties to study the impact of U.S. counties' stay-at-home orders on community mobility before and after The White House's campaign to reopen the country. Our results suggest that before the OuAA campaign stay-at-home orders were effective in decreasing time spent at retail&recreation places and in increasing time spent at home. These stay-at-home orders were less effective in more conservative counties. We further find that the OuAA campaign significantly increased time spent at retail&recreation places and decreased time spent at home particularly in conservative counties. However, in conservative counties with stay-at-home orders in place, OuAA campaign was less effective when compared to conservative counties without stay-at-home orders. These findings signal promising news for local (county and state) authorities. That is, even when the federal government is reopening the country, the local authorities that enforced stay-at-home restrictions were to some extent effective.