An Ignored Cost
The Effect of Yes-No Lockdown Strategy, along with Red-Blue Political Partisanship and Other Variables, on April-August Unemployment across U.S. State
This paper examines the relationship between (1) the political leadership of a U.S. state (in partisan Democrat/Republican terms) during the novel coronavirus crisis as well as (2) the lockdown behavior of that state and (3) April-August 2020 unemployment rates. To measure that relationship, I calculate the mean average unemployment rate during each of the five months that I analyze for Democratic “blue states,” Republican “red states,” and states corresponding to each of several measures of lockdown. Finally, I run a series of multi-variate linear regressions, with the factor variables that are contained in each model broken down in detail below, against the dependent variable(s) of U.S. unemployment in each April-August month. I find no statistically significant correlation between the blue/red political orientation of a state, but multiple significant correlations between lockdown policy implementation and increasing orientation. While this paper is written in business-brief format, I do expect to publish or present sections of it as an academic article.
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