Assessing alternative indicators for Covid-19 policy evaluation, with a counterfactual for Sweden

Chiara Latour, Franco Peracchi and Giancarlo Spagnolo

PLOS ONE, 2022, vol. 17, issue 3, 1-18

Abstract: Using the synthetic control method, we construct counterfactuals for what would have happened if Sweden had imposed a lockdown during the first wave of the COVID-19 epidemic. We consider eight different indicators, including a novel one that we construct by adjusting recorded daily COVID-19 deaths to account for weakly excess mortality. Correcting for data problems and re-optimizing the synthetic control for each indicator, we find that a lockdown would have had sizable effects within one week. The much longer delay estimated by two previous studies focusing on the number of positives cases is mainly driven by the extremely low testing frequency that prevailed in Sweden in the first months of the epidemic. This result appears relevant for choosing the timing of future lockdowns and highlights the importance of looking at several indicators to derive robust conclusions. We also find that our novel indicator is effective in correcting errors in the COVID-19 deaths series and that the quantitative effects of the lockdown are stronger than previously estimated.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0264769 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 64769&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Assessing Alternative Indicators for Covid-19 Policy Evaluation, with a Counterfactual for Sweden (2022)
Working Paper: Assessing Alternative Indicators for Covid-19 Policy Evaluation, with a Counterfactual for Sweden (2021)
Working Paper: Assessing Alternative Indicators for Covid-19 Policy Evaluation, with a Counterfactual for Sweden (2021)
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:plo:pone00:0264769

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0264769

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().