IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/reecon/v76y2022i4p277-289.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Economic resilience in times of public health shock: The case of the US states

Author

Listed:
  • Osman, Syed Muhammad Ishraque
  • Islam, Faridul
  • Sakib, Nazmus

Abstract

Does adopting social distancing policies amid a health crisis, e.g., COVID-19, hurt economies? Using a machine learning approach at the intermediate stage, we applied a generalized synthetic control method to answer this question. We utilize state policy response differences. Cross-validation, a machine learning approach, is used to produce the “counterfactual” for adopting states—how they “would have behaved” without lockdown orders. We categorize states with social distancing as the treatment group and those without as the control. We employ the state time-period for fixed effects, adjusting for selection bias and endogeneity. We find significant and intuitively explicable impacts on some states, such as West Virginia, but none at the aggregate level, suggesting that social distancing may not affect the entire economy. Our work implies a resilience index utilizing the magnitude and significance of the social distancing measures to rank the states' resilience. These findings help governments and businesses better prepare for shocks.

Suggested Citation

  • Osman, Syed Muhammad Ishraque & Islam, Faridul & Sakib, Nazmus, 2022. "Economic resilience in times of public health shock: The case of the US states," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(4), pages 277-289.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:reecon:v:76:y:2022:i:4:p:277-289
    DOI: 10.1016/j.rie.2022.08.004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090944322000382
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.rie.2022.08.004?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Christopher Blattman & Donald P Green & Daniel Ortega & Santiago Tobón, 2021. "Place-Based Interventions at Scale: The Direct and Spillover Effects of Policing and City Services on Crime [Clustering as a Design Problem]," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 19(4), pages 2022-2051.
    2. Charlene M. Kalenkoski & Donald J. Lacombe, 2013. "Minimum wages and teen employment: A spatial panel approach," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 92(2), pages 407-417, June.
    3. Wagner, Wolf & Beck, Thorsten, 2020. "National containment policies and international cooperation," CEPR Discussion Papers 14668, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Vadim Elenev & Tim Landvoigt & Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, 2022. "Can the covid bailouts save the economy?," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 37(110), pages 277-330.
    5. Alan B. Krueger & David Card, 2000. "Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast-Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania: Reply," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(5), pages 1397-1420, December.
    6. Sumedha Gupta & Kosali I. Simon & Coady Wing, 2020. "Mandated and Voluntary Social Distancing During The COVID-19 Epidemic: A Review," NBER Working Papers 28139, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Xu, Yiqing, 2017. "Generalized Synthetic Control Method: Causal Inference with Interactive Fixed Effects Models," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(1), pages 57-76, January.
    8. Enrico Moretti, 2014. "Local Economic Development, Agglomeration Economies, and the Big Push: 100 Years of Evidence from the Tennessee Valley Authority," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 129(1), pages 275-331.
    9. Huang, Rocco R., 2008. "Evaluating the real effect of bank branching deregulation: Comparing contiguous counties across US state borders," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(3), pages 678-705, March.
    10. Abel Brodeur & David Gray & Anik Islam & Suraiya Bhuiyan, 2021. "A literature review of the economics of COVID‐19," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(4), pages 1007-1044, September.
    11. David Holtz & Michael Zhao & Seth G. Benzell & Cathy Y. Cao & Mohammad Amin Rahimian & Jeremy Yang & Jennifer Allen & Avinash Collis & Alex Moehring & Tara Sowrirajan & Dipayan Ghosh & Yunhao Zhang & , 2020. "Interdependence and the cost of uncoordinated responses to COVID-19," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 117(33), pages 19837-19843, August.
    12. 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.
    13. Hanson, Andrew & Rohlin, Shawn, 2013. "Do spatially targeted redevelopment programs spillover?," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 86-100.
    14. Sebastian Galiani & Brian Quistorff, 2017. "The synth runner package: Utilities to automate synthetic control estimation using synth," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 17(4), pages 834-849, December.
    15. Thomas J. Holmes, 1998. "The Effect of State Policies on the Location of Manufacturing: Evidence from State Borders," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(4), pages 667-705, August.
    16. Baicker, Katherine, 2005. "The spillover effects of state spending," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(2-3), pages 529-544, February.
    17. Christopher Avery & William Bossert & Adam Clark & Glenn Ellison & Sara Fisher Ellison, 2020. "An Economist's Guide to Epidemiology Models of Infectious Disease," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 34(4), pages 79-104, Fall.
    18. Imbens,Guido W. & Rubin,Donald B., 2015. "Causal Inference for Statistics, Social, and Biomedical Sciences," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521885881, September.
    19. Isen, Adam, 2014. "Do local government fiscal spillovers exist? Evidence from counties, municipalities, and school districts," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 57-73.
    20. Theodore M. Crone & Alan Clayton-Matthews, 2005. "Consistent Economic Indexes for the 50 States," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(4), pages 593-603, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Vadim Elenev & Luis E. Quintero & Alessandro Rebucci & Emilia Simeonova, 2021. "Direct and Spillover Effects from Staggered Adoption of Health Policies: Evidence from COVID-19 Stay-at-Home Orders," NBER Working Papers 29088, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Alexander Chudik & M. Hashem Pesaran & Alessandro Rebucci, 2023. "Social Distancing, Vaccination and Evolution of COVID-19 Transmission Rates in Europe," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 71(2), pages 474-508, June.
    3. Alexander Chudik & M. Hashem Pesaran & Alessandro Rebucci, 2021. "COVID-19 Time-Varying Reproduction Numbers Worldwide: An Empirical Analysis of Mandatory and Voluntary Social Distancing," Globalization Institute Working Papers 407, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
    4. Daniel Kuehn, 2016. "Spillover Bias in Cross-Border Minimum Wage Studies: Evidence from a Gravity Model," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 37(4), pages 441-459, December.
    5. Tong Guo & Srinivasaraghavan Sriram & Puneet Manchanda, 2020. "“Let the Sunshine In”: The Impact of Industry Payment Disclosure on Physician Prescription Behavior," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 39(3), pages 516-539, May.
    6. Maximiliano Marzetti & Rok Spruk, 2023. "Long-Term Economic Effects of Populist Legal Reforms: Evidence from Argentina," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 65(1), pages 60-95, March.
    7. Davide Viviano & Jelena Bradic, 2019. "Synthetic learner: model-free inference on treatments over time," Papers 1904.01490, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2022.
    8. Sviták, Jan & Tichem, Jan & Haasbeek, Stefan, 2021. "Price effects of search advertising restrictions," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    9. Kirill Borusyak & Xavier Jaravel & Jann Spiess, 2021. "Revisiting Event Study Designs: Robust and Efficient Estimation," Papers 2108.12419, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2024.
    10. Jacob Bundrick & Weici Yuan, 2019. "Do Targeted Business Subsidies Improve Income and Reduce Poverty? A Synthetic Control Approach," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 33(4), pages 351-375, November.
    11. Gao, Ming & Gu, Qiankun & He, Shijun, 2022. "Place-based policies, administrative hierarchy, and city growth: Evidence from China," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    12. Alexander S. Skorobogatov, 2021. "The effect of alcohol sales restrictions on alcohol poisoning mortality: Evidence from Russia," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(6), pages 1417-1442, June.
    13. Lea Bottmer & Guido Imbens & Jann Spiess & Merrill Warnick, 2021. "A Design-Based Perspective on Synthetic Control Methods," Papers 2101.09398, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2023.
    14. Dmitry Arkhangelsky & Guido Imbens, 2023. "Causal Models for Longitudinal and Panel Data: A Survey," Papers 2311.15458, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2024.
    15. Kong, Dongmin & Qin, Ni & Xiang, Junyi, 2021. "Minimum wage and entrepreneurship: Evidence from China," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 189(C), pages 320-336.
    16. Juan S. Mora‐Sanguinetti & Rok Spruk, 2023. "Economic effects of recent experiences of federalism: Analysis of the regionalization process in Spain," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 63(1), pages 30-63, January.
    17. Denti, Daria & Iammarino, Simona, 2022. "Coming Out of the Woods. Do local support services influence the propensity to report sexual violence?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 193(C), pages 334-352.
    18. Jason Poulos & Shuxi Zeng, 2021. "RNN‐based counterfactual prediction, with an application to homestead policy and public schooling," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 70(4), pages 1124-1139, August.
    19. Dmitry Arkhangelsky & Susan Athey & David A. Hirshberg & Guido W. Imbens & Stefan Wager, 2021. "Synthetic Difference-in-Differences," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(12), pages 4088-4118, December.
    20. Eliason, Paul & Lutz, Byron, 2018. "Can fiscal rules constrain the size of government? An analysis of the “crown jewel” of tax and expenditure limitations," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 115-144.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    COVID-19; Economic resilience; Generalized synthetic control; Machine Learning and Causal Inference;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • I15 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Economic Development
    • C01 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - General - - - Econometrics

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:reecon:v:76:y:2022:i:4:p:277-289. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622941 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.