Open AccessEffects of the COVID-related stay-at-home order on hospitality sales and automobile traffic counts: evidence from the State of Maine, USA
Author(s) -
Todd Gabe,
Andrew Crawley
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
economics and business letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.197
H-Index - 4
ISSN - 2254-4380
DOI - 10.17811/ebl.10.4.2021.336-341
Subject(s) - hospitality , covid-19 , order (exchange) , government (linguistics) , pandemic , business , state (computer science) , economic impact analysis , retail sales , demographic economics , public economics , marketing , economics , finance , tourism , geography , medicine , philosophy , algorithm , linguistics , archaeology , pathology , virology , outbreak , computer science , microeconomics , disease , infectious disease (medical specialty)
This paper examines the effects of the COVID-related Stay-at-Home order on hospitality sales and automobile traffic counts in the State of Maine, USA. Empirical results show that the Stay-at-Home order did not have a statistically significant impact on either measure of state economic activity. Instead, households adjusted their behavior as a result of COVID-19 in advance of the Stay-at-Home order. This is an important public policy issue given the large health and economic impacts of the pandemic, and widespread use of Stay-at-Home orders. Even beyond the COVID pandemic, however, the extent to which people respond to government restrictions is important for policy development and implementation.