Effects of Covid-19 lockdowns on social distancing in Turkey[Synthetic control methods for comparative case studies: Estimating the effect of California’s tobacco control program]

SummaryThis paper elucidates the causal effect of lockdowns on social distancing behaviour in Turkey by adopting an augmented synthetic control and a factor-augmented model approach for imputing counterfactuals. By constructing a synthetic control group that reproduces pre-lockdown trajectory of mobility of the treated provinces and that accommodates staggered adoption, the difference between the counterfactual and actual mobility of treated provinces is assessed in the post-lockdown period. The analysis shows that in the short run following the onset of lockdowns, outdoor mobility would have been about 17–53 percentage points higher on average in the absence of lockdowns, depending on social distancing measure. However, residential mobility would have been about 12 percentage points lower in the absence of lockdowns. The findings are corroborated using interactive fixed effects and matrix completion counterfactuals that accommodate staggered adoption and treatment reversals.