Brownbag Seminars: Economic Costs of Social Distancing

Abstract: Social distancing was aimed to contain Covid-19 pandemic, but it also had indirect effects on economic activity. This paper aims to estimate the effect of distancing interventions on monthly economic indicators, such as unemployment, inflation, and output in manufacturing, wholesale and retail trade, transportation, accommodation and the info’ communication sectors. The main contribution of this paper is the isolation of the causal effect of distancing interventions from the effects of voluntary distancing and the international spillover effects from distancing in other countries. This is a work in progress, results are not yet available.