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Boosting Business Value by Reducing COVID-19 Transmission Risk
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Boosting Business Value by Reducing COVID-19 Transmission Risk

New research measuring the value-risk proposition of different business openings offers insights and strategies for how to minimize pandemic transmission risk.

Seth G. Benzell, Avinash Collis and Christos Nicolaides
MIT Sloan Management Review, 2020
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COVID-19-induced lockdowns had a negative impact on brick-and-mortar businesses across the United States. As the US economy is starting to open up again, businesses must find ways to reopen without putting the health of their employees and customers at unnecessary risk. How can you avoid people clusters inside and in front of your location? Can you offer incentives so that people don’t show up at the same time? A group of MIT researchers offers a series of best practices.

Summary

Measuring the value-risk proposition of different types of brick-and-mortar business offers important insights to both customers and companies during the pandemic.

The economic impact of COVID-19-induced lockdowns and social distancing has varied widely between different types of business. You can derive the relative economic importance of a business by factoring in variables such as employee count, payroll, and the social and economic value of the business.

The transmission risk of various businesses also varies considerably depending on the number of visitors, the amount of social mixing, the ability of people to observe social distancing on...

About the Authors

Seth G. Benzell, Avinash Collis and Christos Nicolaides are Digital Fellows of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy. 

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