Business Reopening Decisions and Demand Forecasts During the COVID-19 Pandemic

by Dylan Balla-Elliott, Zoë B. Cullen, Edward L. Glaeser, Michael Luca, and Christopher Stanton

Findings from a nationwide survey underscore the importance of demand projections and interdependencies among businesses for owners’ reopening decisions. Businesses expect the demand for their services will be greatly depressed for many months to come.

Author Abstract

How quickly will American businesses reopen after COVID-19 lockdowns end? We use a nationwide survey of small businesses to measure firms’ expectations about their re-opening and future demand. A plurality of firms in our sample expect to reopen within days of the end of legal restrictions, but a sizable minority expect to delay their reopening. While health-related variables, such as COVID-19 case rates and physical proximity of workers, do explain the prevalence and expected duration of regulated lockdown, these variables have little or no correlation with post-lockdown reopening intentions. Instead, almost one half of closed or partially open businesses said that their reopening would depend on the reopening of related businesses, including customers and suppliers. Owners expect demand to be one-third lower than before the crisis through autumn. Firms with more pessimistic expectations about demand predict a later reopening. Using an instrumental variables strategy, we estimate the relationship between demand expectations and reopening. These estimates suggest that post-lockdown delays in reopening can be explained by low levels of expected demand.