Abstract
We examine the impact of Social Distancing and Masking on the spread of COVID-19 and on consumer spending. We first estimate models of COVID-19 spread and consumer spending. We find that social distancing has a large effect on reducing COVID-19 spread, while the evidence on mask mandates is mixed. We also find that social distancing reduces consumer spending, but that mask mandates increase consumer spending. Mask mandates also reduce social distancing, magnifying the positive effect on spending. Finally, we observe that social distancing varies significantly by political affiliation, with counties that had high vote shares for Trump in 2016 engaging in significantly less social distancing than counties that had low vote shares for Trump in 2016. We demonstrate that if the whole country had engaged in Trump-supporting levels of social distancing instead of non-Trump-supporting levels of social distancing, COVID-19 cases and deaths would be much higher, while consumer spending would only increase modestly.
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