Regional disparities in Covid and mobility in the Czech Republic (with patterns for employment)

Abstract

The research question is if an increase in pandemics corresponds with significant changes in mobility (supported by the public stay-at-home orders and willing decrease of movements) by the spheres of economic activities (parks (leisure time spending), grocery stores, workplaces, pharmacies, transportation stations, retail, recreation, and home) in the Czech Republic. The additional research question is if this pattern correlates with a high decrease in salaries and employment. This paper aims to answer these research questions. This research applies the graphical analysis and fixed-effects regression methods for high-frequency data for answering these questions. The main result is that an increase in the number of infected people significantly decreases human mobility and increases their visits to pharmacies and staying at homes. At the same time, the government support measures can be effective, because there is no huge drop in salaries and employment in the Czech Regions. This pattern contradicts the expectations based on the US patterns. The output of the regression analysis is that 2-5 thousand new infections a day can paralyze mobility in the entire region.