scholarly journals Interdependence and the Cost of Uncoordinated Responses to COVID-19

Author(s):  
David Holtz ◽  
Michael Zhao ◽  
Seth G. Benzell ◽  
Cathy Y. Cao ◽  
M. Amin Rahimian ◽  
...  

Social distancing is the core policy response to COVID-19. But as federal, state and local governments begin opening businesses and relaxing shelter-in-place orders worldwide, we lack quantitative evidence on how policies in one region affect mobility and social distancing in other regions and the consequences of uncoordinated regional policies adopted in the presence of such spillovers. We therefore combined daily, county-level data on shelter-in-place and business closure policies with movement data from over 27 million mobile devices, social network connections among over 220 million of Facebook users, daily temperature and precipitation data from 62,000 weather stations and county-level census data on population demographics to estimate the geographic and social network spillovers created by regional policies across the United States. Our analysis showed the contact patterns of people in a given region are significantly influenced by the policies and behaviors of people in other, sometimes distant, regions. When just one third of a state’s social and geographic peer states adopt shelter in place policies, it creates a reduction in mobility equal to the state’s own policy decisions. These spillovers are mediated by peer travel and distancing behaviors in those states. A simple analytical model calibrated with our empirical estimates demonstrated that the “loss from anarchy” in uncoordinated state policies is increasing in the number of non cooperating states and the size of social and geographic spillovers. These results suggest a substantial cost of uncoordinated government responses to COVID-19 when people, ideas, and media move across borders.

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (33) ◽  
pp. 19837-19843 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Holtz ◽  
Michael Zhao ◽  
Seth G. Benzell ◽  
Cathy Y. Cao ◽  
Mohammad Amin Rahimian ◽  
...  

Social distancing is the core policy response to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). But, as federal, state and local governments begin opening businesses and relaxing shelter-in-place orders worldwide, we lack quantitative evidence on how policies in one region affect mobility and social distancing in other regions and the consequences of uncoordinated regional policies adopted in the presence of such spillovers. To investigate this concern, we combined daily, county-level data on shelter-in-place policies with movement data from over 27 million mobile devices, social network connections among over 220 million Facebook users, daily temperature and precipitation data from 62,000 weather stations, and county-level census data on population demographics to estimate the geographic and social network spillovers created by regional policies across the United States. Our analysis shows that the contact patterns of people in a given region are significantly influenced by the policies and behaviors of people in other, sometimes distant, regions. When just one-third of a state’s social and geographic peer states adopt shelter-in-place policies, it creates a reduction in mobility equal to the state’s own policy decisions. These spillovers are mediated by peer travel and distancing behaviors in those states. A simple analytical model calibrated with our empirical estimates demonstrated that the “loss from anarchy” in uncoordinated state policies is increasing in the number of noncooperating states and the size of social and geographic spillovers. These results suggest a substantial cost of uncoordinated government responses to COVID-19 when people, ideas, and media move across borders.


Government increasingly relies on nonprofit organizations to deliver public services, especially for human services. As such, human service nonprofits receive a substantial amount of revenue from government agencies via grants and contracts. Yet, times of crises result in greater demand for services, but often with fewer financial resources. As governments and nonprofits are tasked to do more with less, how does diversification within the government funding stream influence government-nonprofit funding relationships? More specifically, we ask: How do the number of different government partners and the type of government funder—federal, state, or local—influence whether nonprofits face alterations to government funding agreements? Drawing upon data from over 2,000 human service nonprofits in the United States, following the Great Recession, we find nonprofit organizations that only received funds from the federal government were less likely to experience funding alterations. This helps to illustrate the economic impact of the recession on state and local governments as well as the nonprofit organizations that partner with them.


2019 ◽  
pp. 184-208
Author(s):  
David M. Struthers

This chapter examines the World War One period in which the federal, state, and local governments in the United States, in addition to non-state actors, created one of the most severe eras of political repression in United States history. The Espionage Act, the Sedition Act, changes to immigration law at the federal level, and state criminal syndicalism laws served as the legal basis for repression. The Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM), Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and other anarchists took different paths in this era. Some faced lengthy prison sentences, some went underground, while others crossed international borders to flee repression and continue organizing. This chapter examines the repression of radical movements and organizing continuities that sustained the movement into the 1920s.


2008 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane A. Bullock, BA ◽  
George D. Haddow, MURP

Our nation continues to experience increased frequency and severity of weather disasters. All of these risks demand that we look at the current system and assess if this system, which is predicated on strong Federal leadership in partnership with State and local governments and which failed so visibly in Hurricane Katrina, needs to be rebuilt on a new model. We are suggesting a plan of action that, we believe, is practical, achievable, and will reduce the costs in lives, property, environmental and economic damage from future disasters. The next President is the only person who can make this happen.We suggest that the next President undertake the following steps: (1) move FEMA out of the Department of Homeland Security; (2) appoint a FEMA Director, who is a trusted adviser to the President; (3) include the appointment of the FEMA Director in the first round of Presidential appointees to the Cabinet; (4) rebuild the Federal Response Plan; (5) remove the hazard mitigation and long-term recovery functions from FEMA; (6) invest $2.5 billion annually in hazard mitigation; (7) support community disaster resiliency efforts. The next President will have the opportunity to build the new partnership of Federal, State and local governments, voluntary agencies, nonprofits and the private sector that is needed to make our nation resilient. The question is will the next President take advantage of this opportunity?


1998 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Baber

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s federal, state, and local governments worked together to implement policies that expanded the nation's highway systems, encouraged suburban expansion, and funded wholesale clearance projects in so-called slum and depressed inner city areas. These policies created programs that directly affected African Americans in cities all over the United States by targeting older neighborhoods, eliminating affordable (though substandard) housing, dislocating families and extended networks, and replacing what existed with highway overpasses, widened city streets, massive sewer projects, parks, and public housing. The residents of the affected neighborhoods were not involved in the planning, much of which took place years before the programs were implemented, and their voices were not well represented at public hearings. Absentee land owners, who leased properties to African Americans, capitalized on Urban Renewal opportunities, selling their holdings or allowing them to be claimed by condemnation or eminent domain for "fair market values." Those who were displaced had few options for relocation and resettled in other areas where they could find affordable housing, creating new low-income neighborhoods where they were once again tenants of absentee landlords. Traditional services—beauty and barber shops, medical offices and other businesses—were dispersed and people found it harder to conduct business with their friends and neighbors. Streets were broken up by highways, and people without transportation could no longer walk to the traditional business areas. Consumer activity was dispersed to new areas in cities, weakening the African American business foundation and causing many businesses to fail.


Author(s):  
Jade Huang ◽  
Jeffery E. Warner

Train horn noise has been long regarded as a nuisance to the residents of the adjacent communities, in spite of the fact that train horn is an effective deterrent to accidents at highway-rail grade crossings. Federal, state, and local governments are making efforts in mitigating the negative effect of train horn noise. This paper utilized census data and train speed and volume information to develop a GIS-based model that exhibits the train horn noise impact on adjacent populations and demonstrates how these impacts change with altered rail operations. This model serves as a tool for planners, engineers, and decision-makers to gain a better understanding of the most affected areas, thus pursue the most appropriate mitigation measures for the localities.


2007 ◽  
Vol 22 (5) ◽  
pp. 436-439 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert A. De Lorenzo

AbstractDisaster preparedness and response have gained increased attention in the United States as a result of terrorism and disaster threats. However, funding of hospital preparedness, especially surge capacity, has lagged behind other preparedness priorities. Only a small portion of the money allocated for national preparedness is directed toward health care, and hospitals receive very little of that. Under current policy, virtually the entire funding stream for hospital preparedness comes from general tax revenues. Medical payers (e.g., Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance) directly fund little, if any, of the current bill. Funding options to improve preparedness include increasing the current federal grants allocated to hospitals, using payer fees or a tax to sub- sidize preparedness, and financing other forms of expansion capability, such as mobile hospitals. Alternatively, the status quo of marginal preparedness can be maintained. In any event, achieving higher levels of preparedness likely will take the combined commitment of the hospital industry, public and private payers, and federal, state, and local governments. Ultimately, the costs of pre- paredness will be borne by the public in the form of taxes, higher healthcare costs, or through the acceptance of greater risk.


1992 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip R. Berke ◽  
Timothy Beatley

This paper presents conclusions and their implications for planning and public policy from a comprehensive study of local seismic hazard mitigation programs throughout the United States. Data from the study were obtained from a mail survey and three case communities. A key study conclusion is that while earthquake mitigation activity is higher among California communities than in communities of other states, it is considerably lower than for other types of hazards. Other key conclusions are that local officials can undertake a variety of activities to effectively advance planning for earthquakes, and that the more effective activities occurred through an interactive learning process where creative compromises among differing community perspectives were more likely. These conclusions imply that while there is a substantial need to better integrate earthquake mitigation into development and land use decision making, local government efforts to advance mitigation programs have a substantial potential for success. They also imply that achieving effective local response requires substantial changes in current practices of federal, state and local governments.


2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 595-640 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phil Nicholas ◽  
Andrew Churchill

Over one million drug arrests occur in the United States each year, the vast majority of which are made at the state and local levels. This study examines the time period when state and local governments began to aggressively police illegal drugs, and we seek to determine the extent Harry Anslinger, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics Commissioner, actively encouraged these governments to expand drug enforcement and adopt more punitive sentences. The study found that although Anslinger and his agency worked to influence state and local drug policy in the United States, they enjoyed varying levels of success from state to state. By the mid-1950s, a new intergovernmental enforcement regime had emerged where the federal, state, and local governments adopted punitive drug laws and invested resources in policing drugs. Drug enforcement remains the dominant policy approach in the United States.


Author(s):  
Kimberly Jenkins Robinson

Education federalism in the United States promotes state and local authority over education and a limited federal role. This approach to education federalism often serves as an influential yet underappreciated influence on education law and policy. This chapter explores how education federalism in the United States has evolved over time, its strengths and drawbacks, as well as how it has hindered efforts to advance equal educational opportunity. It argues that to achieve the nation’s education aims, education federalism must be restructured to embrace a more efficacious and efficient allocation of authority of education that embraces the policymaking strengths of each level of government while ensuring that all levels of government aim to achieve equitable access to an excellent education. The chapter proposes how to restructure education federalism to support a partnership between federal, state, and local governments to achieve equitable access to an excellent education. It also explains how this new approach to education federal could guide the United States toward a more impactful reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document