Policy evaluation during a pandemic

DOI10.1016/J.JECONOM.2023.03.009arXiv2105.06927OpenAlexW3160593184MaRDI QIDQ6133349FDOQ6133349

Tong Li, Brantly Callaway

Publication date: 18 August 2023

Published in: Journal of Econometrics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: National and local governments have implemented a large number of policies in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Evaluating the effects of these policies, both on the number of Covid-19 cases as well as on other economic outcomes is a key ingredient for policymakers to be able to determine which policies are most effective as well as the relative costs and benefits of particular policies. In this paper, we consider the relative merits of common identification strategies that exploit variation in the timing of policies across different locations by checking whether the identification strategies are compatible with leading epidemic models in the epidemiology literature. We argue that unconfoundedness type approaches, that condition on the pre-treatment "state" of the pandemic, are likely to be more useful for evaluating policies than difference-in-differences type approaches due to the highly nonlinear spread of cases during a pandemic. For difference-in-differences, we further show that a version of this problem continues to exist even when one is interested in understanding the effect of a policy on other economic outcomes when those outcomes also depend on the number of Covid-19 cases. We propose alternative approaches that are able to circumvent these issues. We apply our proposed approach to study the effect of state level shelter-in-place orders early in the pandemic.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.06927

zbMATH Keywords

difference-in-differencespolicy evaluationunconfoundednessmediatorspandemicCovid-19

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Statistics (62-XX) Game theory, economics, finance, and other social and behavioral sciences (91-XX)

Cites Work

• Doubly robust difference-in-differences estimators
• Doubly Robust Estimation in Missing Data and Causal Inference Models
• Semiparametric Difference-in-Differences Estimators
• Dealing with limited overlap in estimation of average treatment effects
• Efficient Estimation of Average Treatment Effects Using the Estimated Propensity Score
• Identification and Inference in Nonlinear Difference-in-Differences Models
• Identification and estimation of triangular simultaneous equations models without additivity
• Matching As An Econometric Evaluation Estimator: Evidence from Evaluating a Job Training Programme
• A GENERAL DOUBLE ROBUSTNESS RESULT FOR ESTIMATING AVERAGE TREATMENT EFFECTS
• Alternative methods for evaluating the impact of interventions. An overview
• An Introduction to Stochastic Epidemic Models
• The Estimation of Causal Effects by Difference-in-Difference MethodsEstimation of Spatial Panels
• Estimating the COVID-19 infection rate: anatomy of an inference problem
• Quantile treatment effects in difference in differences models with panel data
• Analysis of the bias of matching and difference-in-difference under alternative earnings and selection processes
• Estimating dynamic treatment effects in event studies with heterogeneous treatment effects
• Difference-in-differences with multiple time periods
• Estimating and simulating a SIRD model of COVID-19 for many countries, states, and cities
• Causal impact of masks, policies, behavior on early Covid-19 pandemic in the U.S.
• Difference-in-differences with variation in treatment timing
• Quantifying the impact of nonpharmaceutical interventions during the COVID-19 outbreak: The case of Sweden
• Power and sample size for observational studies of point exposure effects

Cited In (1)

• Treatment effects in interactive fixed effects models with a small number of time periods

This page was built for publication: Policy evaluation during a pandemic

Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q6133349)