  We find UK 'local lockdowns' of cities and small regions, focused on limiting
how many people a household can interact with and in what settings, are
effective in turning the tide on rising positive COVID-19 cases. Yet, by
focusing on household mixing within the home, these local lockdowns have not
inflicted the large declines in consumption observed in March 2020 when the
first virus wave and first national lockdown occurred. Our study harnesses a
new source of real-time, transaction-level consumption data that we show to be
highly correlated with official statistics. The effectiveness of local
lockdowns are evaluated applying a difference-in-difference approach which
exploits nearby localities not subject to local lockdowns as comparison groups.
Our findings indicate that policymakers may be able to contain virus outbreaks
without killing local economies. However, the ultimate effectiveness of local
lockdowns is expected to be highly dependent on co-ordination between regions
and an effective system of testing.
