Vaccination policy and mortality from COVID-19 in the European Union

Eleonora Agostini, Francesco Bloise and Massimiliano Tancioni

The Econometrics Journal, 2024, vol. 27, issue 2, 299-322

Abstract: SummaryThis paper estimates the dynamic effect of vaccination on mortality from COVID-19 using weekly data from 26 European Union countries during 2021. Our analysis relies on the double machine learning method to control for multiple confounders, including nonpharmaceutical interventions, climate variables, mobility factors, variants of concern, country- and week-specific shocks. In our baseline specification, we show that a 10 percentage point increase in cumulative doses per hundred inhabitants averts 5.08 COVID-19 deaths per million inhabitants at the eight-week horizon and 26.41 deaths in the eight-week time window considered. The average reduction in mortality in this window is close to 50%. Further estimates reveal that the effect of doses administered to adults aged 18–59 does not statistically differ from that of doses received by people aged 60 and over. Finally, vaccine-specific estimates document that mRNA-1273 (Moderna) and Vaxzevria (AstraZeneca) are more cost-effective in saving lives than Comirnaty (Pfizer), while we are unable to demonstrate any effect of Ad26.COV2.S (Johnson & Johnson).

Keywords: COVID-19; double machine learning; policy evaluation; vaccination (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ectj/utae005 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:emjrnl:v:27:y:2024:i:2:p:299-322.

Access Statistics for this article

The Econometrics Journal is currently edited by Jaap Abbring

More articles in The Econometrics Journal from Royal Economic Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().