O impacto geográfico das políticas de restrição à movimentação durante a pandemia de Covid-19: o caso de São Paulo

Abstract

The present research, intends to recover the spillover effect of policies related to mobility curtailment during the COVID-19 pandemic in the state of São Paulo. Thus, variables linked to health, to socioeconomic factors, to demography and to the variable of interest – “Social Isolation Adherence Index”, elaborated by the São Paulo’s University Institute of Technological Research (IPT/USP) – were considered. In addition, an “ideological variable” was also taken into account with the aim of controlling the effects of a more “loose” behavior during the pandemic on account of a “political adherence”. The estimation via instrumental variable had one important instrument which was essential to remove the reverse causality dynamic between the index of interest and the dependent variable, namely, extreme temperatures. Robustness checks were done to ensure more confidence to estimations and, by using the log-logaritmized 2SLS model, it was reckoned that for each 1% increase in our social distancing indicator a decrease of 8.416% occurred in the average of new daily cases for each one of the months considered. It was concluded that social distancing, as measured by IPT, has contributed to a reduction in the average of new daily cases in our model.