arXiv 21 Jun 2021 · Econometrics · 7 citations (OpenAlex)
arXiv:2106.10949 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text
In the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, multiple studies rely on two-way fixed effects (FE) models to assess the impact of mitigation policies on health outcomes. Building on the SIRD model of disease transmission, I show that FE models tend to be misspecified for three reasons. First, despite misleading common trends in the pre-treatment period, the parallel trends assumption generally does not hold. Second, heterogeneity in infection rates and infected populations across regions cannot be accounted for by region-specific fixed effects, nor by conditioning on observable time-varying confounders. Third, epidemiological theory predicts heterogeneous treatment effects across regions and over time. Via simulations, I find that the bias resulting from model misspecification can be substantial, in magnitude and sometimes in sign. Overall, my results caution against the use of FE models for mitigation policy evaluation.
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The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.
| Reference | Intensity | Mentions | Sections | Main text | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Callaway, B. and Li, T (2021) Policy evaluation during a pandemic | 0.511 | 2 | 1 | 100% |
| 2 | Hsiang, S., Allen, D., Annan-Phan, S., Bell, K., Bolliger, I., Chong… (2020) The effect of large-scale anti-contagion policies on the covid-19 pandemic | 0.511 | 2 | 1 | 100% |
| 3 | de Chaisemartin, C. and D'Haultfœuille, X (2020) Two-way fixed effects estimators with heterogeneous treatment effects | 0.405 | 1 | 1 | 100% |
| 4 | Mitze, T., Kosfeld, R., Rode, J., and Wälde, K (2020) Face masks considerably reduce covid-19 cases in germany | 0.405 | 1 | 1 | 100% |
| 5 | Allcott, H., Boxell, L., Conway, J., Ferguson, B., Gentzkow, M., and… (2020) Economic and health impacts of social distancing policies during the coronavirus pandemic | 0.405 | 1 | 1 | 100% |
| 6 | Allen, L. J (2008) An introduction to stochastic epidemic models | 0.405 | 1 | 1 | 100% |
| 7 | Ash, E., Galletta, S., Hangartner, D., Margalit, Y., and Pinna, M (2020) The effect of fox news on health behavior during covid-19 | 0.405 | 1 | 1 | 100% |
| 8 | Athey, S. and Imbens, G. W (2018) Design-based analysis in difference-in-differences settings with staggered adoption | 0.405 | 1 | 1 | 100% |
| 9 | Borusyak, K. and Jaravel, X (2017) Revisiting event study designs | 0.405 | 1 | 1 | 100% |
| 10 | Bursztyn, L., Rao, A., Roth, C., and Yanagizawa-Drott, D (2020) Misinformation during a pandemic | 0.405 | 1 | 1 | 100% |
Showing the top 10 of 30 scored citations.
arXiv econ.EM papers that cite this one, ranked by how heavily they lean on it.
| Citing paper | Intensity | Mentions | Sections | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Evaluating Policies Early in a Pandemic: Bounding Policy Effects with Nonrandomly Missing Data | 0.405 | 1 | 1 |
| 2 | Policy Evaluation during a Pandemic | 0.405 | 1 | 1 |