Explorations of High-Frequency Measures of Business Exit during COVID-19

Join this Data Community Session to hear from Aaron Flaaen (Federal Reserve Board): "An important question with little available data is the extent to which temporary closures related to COVID-19 have translated into permanent business exit. This paper creates some measures of potential permanent exit for one sector --- sit-down restaurants--- based on patterns of customer in-person visits derived from cellphone tracking data. Preliminary estimates indicate that the fraction of restaurants closing through August, 2020 of around 13 percent is between 2 and 6 times higher than a typical year."