Related papers: Lockdown effects in US states: an artificial count…

Assessing the economic impact of COVID-19 pandemic and public health policies is essential for a rapid recovery. In this paper, we analyze the impact of mobility contraction on furloughed workers and excess deaths in Italy. We provide a…

We analyze the methodological approach and validity of interpretation of using national-level time-series regression analyses relating epidemic outcomes to policies that estimate many models involving permutations of analytic choices (i.e.,…

Social distancing and isolation have been introduced widely to counter the COVID-19 pandemic. However, more moderate contact reduction policies become desirable owing to adverse social, psychological, and economic consequences of a complete…

Some have claimed that the future development of powerful AI systems would enable the United States to shift the international balance of power dramatically in its favor. Such a feat may not be technically possible; even so, if American AI…

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, empirical data have revealed that large-scale health crises not only cause immediate disruptions in mortality dynamics but also have persistent effects that may last for several years. Existing…

This paper addresses the problem of identifying and estimating the causal effect of a treatment in the presence of unmeasured confounding and various types of right-censoring. Examples of these censoring mechanisms are administrative…

Counterfactual predictions are challenging when the policy variable goes beyond its pre-policy support. However, in many cases, information about the policy of interest is available from different ("source") regions where a similar policy…

Strong empirical evidence from laboratory experiments, and more recently from population surveys, shows that individuals, when evaluating their situations, pay attention to whether they experience gains or losses, with losses weighing more…

Semi-competing risks refer to the phenomenon that the terminal event (such as death) can censor the non-terminal event (such as disease progression) but not vice versa. The treatment effect on the terminal event can be delivered either…

To slow down the spread of Covid-19, administrative regions within Pakistan imposed complete and partial lockdown restrictions on socio-economic activities, religious congregations, and human movement. Here we examine the impact of regional…

Several non-pharmaceutical interventions have been proposed to control the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. On the large scale, these empirical solutions, often associated with extended and complete lockdowns, attempt to minimize the costs…

This study examines the effect of COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns on access to crucial diagnostic procedures for breast cancer patients, including screenings and treatments. To quantify the impact of the lockdowns on patient…

Counterfactuals are often described as 'retrospective,' focusing on hypothetical alternatives to a realized past. This description relates to an often implicit assumption about the structure and stability of exogenous variables in the…

Quantifying the impact of regulatory policies on social welfare generally requires the identification of counterfactual distributions. Many of these policies (e.g. minimum wages or minimum working time) generate mass points and/or…

We investigate the limitations of random trials when the cause of interest is confounded with the effect by formalizing a counterfactual policy-space where the agent's natural predilection is input to a soft-intervention.

Work in Counterfactual Explanations tends to focus on the principle of "the closest possible world" that identifies small changes leading to the desired outcome. In this paper we argue that while this approach might initially seem…

We describe and contrast two distinct problem areas for statistical causality: studying the likely effects of an intervention ("effects of causes"), and studying whether there is a causal link between the observed exposure and outcome in an…

Decisions to deploy AI capabilities are often driven by counterfactuals - a comparison of decisions made using AI to decisions that would have been made if the AI were not used. Counterfactual misses, which are poor decisions that are…

At the end of 2019, an outbreak of a novel coronavirus was reported in China, leading to the COVID-19 pandemic. In Spain, the first cases were detected in late January 2020, and by mid-March, infections had surpassed 5,000. On March the…

The COVID-19 pandemic has led many governments to implement lockdowns. While lockdowns may help to contain the spread of the virus, it is possible that substantial damage to population well-being will result. This study relies on Google…