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

IF 2.2 4区管理学 Q2 PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

Policy Studies Pub Date : 2022-07-21 DOI:10.1080/01442872.2022.2103527

M. Giuliani

引用次数: 3

Abstract

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.

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COVID-19反事实证据。估计学校关闭的影响

学者们已经开始评估非药物干预措施对减少COVID-19健康影响的效果。然而，经验证据存在很大的争议，而且由于不知道如果没有这些措施会发生什么，政治上的混混者就可以自由地相信他们最喜欢的声音。我们认为，对抗疫政策有效性的任何合理评估，都需要在方法论上反思什么是真正的可比性，以及如何接近约翰·斯图尔特·穆勒(John Stuart Mill)提出的理想的“差异方法”。通过评估学校关闭作为抗covid政策的有效性，我们提供了两个例子，其中适当的反事实是归纳发现的，而不是先验选择的。在第一篇文章中，我们在跨国环境中使用粗化精确匹配(CEM)，而在第二篇文章中，我们在国内分析中实现了综合控制方法。这篇文章强调了将这些技术纳入政策学者工具箱的方法论优势，而这两个例子都证实了关闭学校的有效性。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Policy Studies PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION-

CiteScore

5.40

自引率

4.50%

发文量

期刊介绍： These changes at the structural level of the global system have impacted upon the work of public organizations either directly or indirectly and have broadened the field of action in policy studies. It has five main areas of intellectual interest: 1.To broaden the lens of policy analysis through the publication of research which locates policy-making within a theoretical, historical or comparative perspective. 2.To widen the field of enquiry in policy analysis through the publication of research that examines policy issues in a British, comparative, international or global context. 3.To promote constructive debate on theoretical, methodological and empirical issues in policy analysis.