Pandemics and support for mitigation measures

Abstract

Measures reduce health risk but limit economic activities and affect disproportionately the contact-intensive sectors whose economic activities involve more person-to-person interactions. The analysis shows that the size of the contact-intensive sectors shapes the stringency of measures due to the economic interactions between the contact-intensive sectors and other sectors although they constitute a minority of the labor force. Exploiting variation in measures and economic conditions across states, an empirical analysis shows that the number of contact-intensive workers has a negative effect on the stringency of measures.