ABSTRACT
This paper compares economic recovery in the COVID-19 pandemic with other types of disasters, at the scale of businesses. As countries around the world struggle to emerge from the pandemic, studies of business impact and recovery have proliferated; however, pandemic research is often undertaken without the benefit of insights from long-standing research on past large-scale disruptive events, such as floods, storms, and earthquakes. This paper builds synergies between established knowledge on business recovery in disasters and emerging insights from the COVID-19 pandemic. It first proposes a disaster event taxonomy that allows the pandemic to be compared with natural hazard events from the perspective of economic disruption. The paper then identifies five key lessons on business recovery from disasters and compares them to empirical findings from the COVID-19 pandemic. For synthesis, a conceptual framework on business recovery is developed to support policy-makers to anticipate business recovery needs in economically disruptive events, including disasters. Findings from the pandemic largely resonate with those from disasters. Recovery tends to be more difficult for small businesses, those vulnerable to supply chain problems, those facing disrupted markets, and locally-oriented businesses in heavily impacted neighborhoods. Disaster assistance that is fast and less restrictive provides more effective support for business recovery. Some differences emerge, however: substantial business disruption in the pandemic derived from changes in demand due to regulatory measures as well as consumer behaviour; businesses in high-income neighborhoods and central business districts were especially affected; and traditional forms of financial assistance may need to be reconsidered.
ABSTRACT
This paper examines the spatial and temporal trends in county-level COVID-19 cases and fatalities in the United States during the first year of the pandemic (January 2020-January 2021). Statistical and geospatial analyses highlight greater impacts in the Great Plains, Southwestern and Southern regions based on cases and fatalities per 100,000 population. Significant case and fatality spatial clusters were most prevalent between November 2020 and January 2021. Distinct urban-rural differences in COVID-19 experiences uncovered higher rural cases and fatalities per 100,000 population and fewer government mitigation actions enacted in rural counties. High levels of social vulnerability and the absence of mitigation policies were significantly associated with higher fatalities, while existing community resilience had more influential spatial explanatory power. Using differences in percentage unemployment changes between 2019 and 2020 as a proxy for pre-emergent recovery revealed urban counties were hit harder in the early months of the pandemic, corresponding with imposed government mitigation policies. This longitudinal, place-based study confirms some early urban-rural patterns initially observed in the pandemic, as well as the disparate COVID-19 experiences among socially vulnerable populations. The results are critical in identifying geographic disparities in COVID-19 exposures and outcomes and providing the evidentiary basis for targeting pandemic recovery.