COVID-19 counterfactual evidence. Estimating the effects of school closures

Marco Giuliani

Policy Studies, 2023, vol. 44, issue 1, 112-131

Abstract: Scholars have started to estimate the effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions to reduce the health impact of COVID-19. However, the empirical evidence is highly contested, and since it is not known exactly what would have happened without those measures, political élites are left free to give credit to the voices that they prefer the most. We argue that any sensible assessment of the effectiveness of anti-COVID policies requires methodological reflection on what is actually comparable, and how to approximate the ideal “method of difference” theorized by John Stuart Mill. By evaluating the effectiveness of school closures as an anti-COVID policy, we provide two examples in which appropriate counterfactuals are inductively discovered rather than selected a priori. In the first one, we use Coarsened Exact Matching (CEM) in a cross-country setting, while in the second one, we implement the Synthetic Control Method in a within-country analysis. The article highlights the methodological advantages of including these techniques in the toolbox of policy scholars, while both examples confirm the effectiveness of school closures.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01442872.2022.2103527 (text/html)
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:taf:cposxx:v:44:y:2023:i:1:p:112-131

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/cpos20

DOI: 10.1080/01442872.2022.2103527

Access Statistics for this article

Policy Studies is currently edited by Toby James

More articles in Policy Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().