National Bureau of Economic Research
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Shelter-in-Place Policies and Excess Mortality
Shelter-in-place policies were one of the most widely used policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many countries, and most US states, adopted such policies for at least some time. The policies varied in their stringency and duration. How did all-cause excess mortality evolve after these policies were adopted? In a new research paper (28930), NBER Research Associate Neeraj Sood of the University of Southern California (USC), Virat Agrawal of USC, and Jonathan H. Cantor and Christopher M. Whaley of the RAND Corporation compile data on mortality patterns before and after the implementation of the shelter-in-place policies. They find that despite the expectation that these policies would reduce mortality, in most places mortality increased modestly after their adoption. The researchers offer several potential explanations for this finding, including changes in the use of medical care for non-COVID-19 conditions, changes in the transmissibility or virulence of the COVID-19 virus after shelter-in-place policies took effect, and the effects of social isolation. Sood describes their findings in the video below. An archive of NBER videos on pandemic-related research may be found here.
Three NBER working papers distributed this week report on economic, health, and related consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, or on the impact of public policies that respond to it. One documents the pandemic-related increase in excess mortality for various groups, finding the largest increase for Hispanics, and a larger increase for Blacks than for Whites (28958). Another explores ways that private insurers could provide protection against the financial consequences of future pandemics (28968). Another studies the relationship between the implied skewness of interest rates associated with Treasury bond options, and future movements in Treasury yields, during the pandemic and in other periods (28954).
More than 425 NBER working papers have addressed various aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic. These papers are open access and have been collected for easy reference. Like all NBER papers, they are circulated for discussion and comment, and have not been peer-reviewed. View them in reverse chronological order or by topic area.
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Benjamin Jones, Heidi Williams to Lead Innovation Policy Working Group
Benjamin Jones and Heidi Williams are the new codirectors of the NBER Innovation Policy Working Group. Jones is the Gordon and Llura Gund Family Professor in Entrepreneurship and Professor of Strategy at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. Williams is the Charles R. Schwab Professor of Economics at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute of Economic Policy Research. They succeed Scott Stern, the David Sarnoff Professor of Management at MIT’s Sloan School of Management who, along with Adam Jaffe of Brandeis University and Josh Lerner of the Harvard Business School, launched the working group over two decades ago.
The new codirectors have studied a wide range of issues in the field of innovation economics. Jones’ research focuses on the contributions of innovation and scientific progress to economic growth. He has been an NBER affiliate since 2005. Williams’ research examines the determinants and consequences of technological change, with a particular emphasis on innovation in the healthcare sector. She has been NBER affiliate since 2010, and also is a codirector of the NBER Health Care Program.
From the Bulletin on Retirement and Disability
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Featured Working Papers
An experiment by Samuel Berlinski, Matias Busso, Taryn Dinkelman, and Claudia Martinez in low-income schools in Chile demonstrates that sending attendance, grade, and classroom behavior information to parents via weekly and monthly text messages improved math grades and attendance.
The annual social value of employer-sponsored health insurance is about $1.5 trillion more than what policyholders, their employers, and taxpayers pay for it, according to an analysis by Casey B. Mulligan.
The $600 a week increase in US unemployment benefits during the pandemic caused a decline in applications, but did not decrease vacancy creation, according to a study by Ioana Marinescu, Daphne Skandalis, and Daniel Zhao.
High-status students from prestigious private high schools performed worse academically than other Harvard students in the 1920s and 1930s, but were more likely to join exclusive campus clubs and to earn high salaries after college, Valerie Michelman, Joseph Price, and Seth D. Zimmerman find.
After Medicare allowed ambulatory surgery centers to perform a specific procedure, physicians also became 70 percent more likely to use these centers when ordering the procedure for their non-Medicare patients, according to research by Michael Geruso and Michael R. Richards.
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