In response to the COVID‐19 pandemic, governments around the world issued stay‐at‐home orders, which required that individuals stay at home unless they were engaging in certain activities. Often these orders would designate certain goods and services as “essential” and would permit individuals engaged in the production, delivery, and purchase of those goods and services to leave their homes to do so. Implicit in these policies, of course, is the assumption that policymakers can know ex ante which goods and services are essential. As proved true while these stay‐at‐home orders were in effect, essentialness is necessarily subjective and depends on knowledge that is often dispersed, inarticulate, and changes over time. Policymakers, however, do not and often cannot have access to the local knowledge needed to determine ex ante which goods and services are essential, and they lack the feedback mechanisms they would need to adroitly adapt when circumstances change. This paper examines these knowledge problems associated with designating certain goods and services as “essential” when crafting and implementing stay‐at‐home orders.

中文翻译：

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必要与否？知识问题和 COVID-19 居家令

为了应对 COVID-19 大流行，世界各国政府发布了居家令，要求个人除非从事某些活动，否则必须待在家里。通常，这些订单会将某些商品和服务指定为“必需品”，并允许从事这些商品和服务的生产、交付和购买的个人离开家园这样做。当然，这些政策中隐含的假设是政策制定者可以事前知道哪些商品和服务是必不可少的。正如这些居家令生效时所证明的那样，必要性必然是主观的，并且取决于通常分散、口齿不清和随时间变化的知识。然而，政策制定者没有而且往往无法获得事先确定哪些商品和服务是必不可少的当地知识，并且他们缺乏在情况发生变化时灵活适应所需的反馈机制。本文研究了在制定和实施居家订单时将某些商品和服务指定为“必需品”相关的知识问题。