Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP15390
Authors: Christian Alemán; Christopher Busch; Alexander Ludwig; Raúl Santaeulalalopois
Abstract: We develop a novel empirical approach to identify the effectiveness of policies against a pandemic. The essence of our approach is the insight that epidemic dynamics are best tracked over stages, rather than over time. We use a normalization procedure that makes the pre-policy paths of the epidemic identical across regions. The procedure uncovers regional variation in the stage of the epidemic at the time of policy implementation. This variation delivers clean identification of the policy effect based on the epidemic path of a leading region that serves as a counterfactual for other regions. We apply our method to evaluate the effectiveness of the nationwide stay-home policy enacted in Spain against the Covid-19 pandemic. We find that the policy saved 15.9% of lives relative to the number of deaths that would have occurred had it not been for the policy intervention. Its effectiveness evolves with the epidemic and is larger when implemented at earlier stages.
Keywords: macroeconomics; pandemic; stages; covid19; stayhome policy; effects; identification
JEL Codes: E01; E22; E25
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Nationwide stay-home policy in Spain (H59) | Saved lives (H84) |
| Nationwide stay-home policy in Spain (H59) | Lives saved in the rest of Spain (J17) |
| Nationwide stay-home policy in Spain (H59) | Lives saved for early implementers (J17) |
| Nationwide stay-home policy in Spain (H59) | Lives saved for late implementers (J17) |
| Early implementation of stay-home policy (J68) | Higher percentage of lives saved (J17) |
| Late implementation of stay-home policy (H53) | Lower percentage of lives saved (J17) |
| Nationwide stay-home policy in Spain (H59) | Saved lives without Madrid (Y70) |