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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Chance Elections, Social Distancing Restrictions, And Kentucky's Early Covid-19 Experience, Charles J. Courtemanche, Joseph Garuccio, Anh Le, Joshua C. Pinkston, Aaron Yelowitz
Chance Elections, Social Distancing Restrictions, And Kentucky's Early Covid-19 Experience, Charles J. Courtemanche, Joseph Garuccio, Anh Le, Joshua C. Pinkston, Aaron Yelowitz
Economics Faculty Publications
Early in the pandemic, slowing the spread of novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) relied on non-pharmaceutical interventions. All U.S. states adopted social-distancing restrictions in March and April of 2020, though policies varied both in timing and scope. Compared to states with Democratic governors, those with Republican governors often adopted measures for shorter durations and with greater resistance from their residents. In Kentucky, an extremely close gubernatorial election immediately prior to the discovery of SARS-CoV-2 replaced a Republican incumbent with a Democrat, despite Republicans easily winning all other statewide races. This chance election result offers a unique opportunity to examine the …
Covid-19 And The Us Safety Net, Robert A. Moffitt, James P. Ziliak
Covid-19 And The Us Safety Net, Robert A. Moffitt, James P. Ziliak
Economics Faculty Publications
We examine trends in employment, earnings and incomes over the last two decades in the United States, and how the safety net has responded to changing fortunes, including the shutdown of the economy in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The US safety net is a patchwork of different programmes providing in-kind as well as cash benefits, and it had many holes prior to the pandemic. In addition, few of the programmes are designed explicitly as automatic stabilisers. We show that the safety net response to employment losses in the COVID-19 pandemic largely consists only of increased support from unemployment insurance …