 Quantifying the impact of the Tokyo Olympics on COVID-19 cases using synthetic control methodsTaro Esaka and Takao Fujii Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, 2022, vol. 66, issue C Abstract: This paper uses a synthetic control method (SCM) and a Ridge Augmented SCM to estimate the impact of holding the Tokyo Olympic games on the number of newly confirmed COVID-19 cases in Tokyo (Japan). Our analysis with these methods enables us to estimate the causal impact of the Tokyo Olympics on COVID-19 cases by constructing counterfactual COVID-19 cases for Tokyo (Japan) as the optimal weighted average of COVID-19 cases of OECD countries that are not affected by holding the Olympics through a data-driven approach. Based on reliable estimates obtained from different analytical settings, we find that, compared to the counterfactuals, holding the Tokyo Olympics significantly increased the daily average number of COVID-19 cases by 105 to 132 cases in Tokyo (47 to 65 cases in Japan as a whole) per million people. This result suggests that holding the Olympics likely led to the spread of COVID-19 infection in Tokyo (Japan). Keywords: COVID-19; Tokyo Olympics; Public health; Synthetic control method; Causal inference; Counterfactual (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jjieco:v:66:y:2022:i:c:s0889158322000375 DOI: 10.1016/j.jjie.2022.101228 Access Statistics for this article Journal of the Japanese and International Economies is currently edited by Takeo Hoshi More articles in Journal of the Japanese and International Economies from Elsevier |
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