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Evaluating Policies Early in a Pandemic: Bounding Policy Effects with Nonrandomly Missing Data

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  • Brantly Callaway
  • Tong Li

Abstract

During the early part of the Covid-19 pandemic, national and local governments introduced a number of policies to combat the spread of Covid-19. In this paper, we propose a new approach to bound the effects of such early-pandemic policies on Covid-19 cases and other outcomes while dealing with complications arising from (i) limited availability of Covid-19 tests, (ii) differential availability of Covid-19 tests across locations, and (iii) eligibility requirements for individuals to be tested. We use our approach study the effects of Tennessee's expansion of Covid-19 testing early in the pandemic and find that the policy decreased Covid-19 cases.

Suggested Citation

  • Brantly Callaway & Tong Li, 2020. "Evaluating Policies Early in a Pandemic: Bounding Policy Effects with Nonrandomly Missing Data," Papers 2005.09605, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2023.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2005.09605
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    1. Guido W. Imbens & Jeffrey M. Wooldridge, 2009. "Recent Developments in the Econometrics of Program Evaluation," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(1), pages 5-86, March.
    2. Abadie, Alberto & Diamond, Alexis & Hainmueller, Jens, 2010. "Synthetic Control Methods for Comparative Case Studies: Estimating the Effect of California’s Tobacco Control Program," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 105(490), pages 493-505.
    3. Ferman, Bruno, 2021. "Matching estimators with few treated and many control observations," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 225(2), pages 295-307.
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    1. Callaway, Brantly & Li, Tong, 2023. "Policy evaluation during a pandemic," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 236(1).

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