Antonio Trujillo, PhD, Associate Professor, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
The economic tradeoff of removing the COVID-19 lockdown: The tax holiday as a natural experiment
Authors: Nicolas Guzman, BA, MPH (doctoral student in the JHSPH IH department), Antonio J. Trujillo, PhD.
Abstract: This papers provides an innovative identification strategy to assess the causal effect of removing the lockdown on new COVID-19 cases and deaths. Several countries around the world have in place a “Tax Holiday” to incentivized sales. The tax break reduces the households’ costs of the lockdown providing an exogenous variation to mobility as long as consumers go outside their home to buy new goods and services instead of buying them online. During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a constant tension among policy makers about the tradeoff between lockdowns and economic losses. However, assessing its magnitude is difficult due to endogeneity. This paper identifies the causal effect of lockdowns on number of cases and deaths after three Tax Holidays in Colombia during 2020 (before the vaccination campaign) and three cuts in 2021 (after vaccination). Using a difference-in-differences framework, we compare cases and deaths 7, 10, and 14 days before and after each tax date. We implement several specifications and falsification tests. Using the Google mobility indicator “Retail and Recreation”, we report that mobility went up significantly after each Tax Holiday day. We found that approx. 1,500 new daily cases and 60 new daily deaths are attributable to each Tax Holiday before vaccines were available; after the vaccination campaign, differences in new cases and deaths after the tax decline or even disappear. Modeling the cost of hospitalization, ICU costs and the value of a statistical life in Colombia, our results indicate that the health costs of the lockdown are higher than the economic gains before vaccination. The economic gains of removing the lockdown are larger than the associated health costs once vaccines were available. We hope that these findings would inform the management of lockdowns during future pandemics.
Elizabeth Stone, PhD Student, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Stage Agency Integration and Mental Health Services for People with IDD and Mental Illness
Abstract: Individuals with intellectual or developmental disabilities (IDD) have high rates of mental illness but face significant barriers to receipt of mental health services in part due to fragmentation of service systems. This mixed-methods study uses Texas’s 2017 integration of the state IDD and mental health agencies as a case study to examine the process and impacts of agency integration on mental health services used by this population. Qualitative interviews were conducted with Texas mental health and IDD agency and advocacy organization leaders to understand leaders’ perceptions of the process and effects of agency integration. Augmented synthetic control analyses were conducted using Medical Expenditure Panel Survey data from 2014-2019 to examine impacts of agency integration on mental health service utilization measures among individuals with co-occurring IDD and mental illness. While state agency and advocacy organization leaders identified some potentially beneficial impacts of state agency integration, quantitative results indicated no effects of agency integration on measures of mental health service use, suggesting that additional policy changes at multiple levels of the service system are needed to meet the mental health service needs for adults with IDD.
Work-in-Progress Seminar Series
Are you committed to supporting your colleagues in the development of interdisciplinary research on the business of health? Are you open to meeting and collaborating with researchers at JHU you don't know? We invite you to join our work-in-progress (WIP) seminar series, at the heart of HBHI’s mission to promote a healthier America.
First Fridays @HBHI
12 to 1 p.m. ET via Zoom
Serving as incubator for bold new ideas, the WIP seminar provides an internal forum for Johns Hopkins scholars, both students and faculty to:
Present initial stage research
Receive feedback from an interdisciplinary audience
Explore potential partnerships
By pooling the collective subject matter expertise of Johns Hopkins faculty, the WIP series accelerates and enhances new research.
If you are an HBHI affiliate and interested in presenting in the WIP series, please email Michael Darden. Provide a proposed title for your presentation.
Email [email protected] to be added to the WIP listserv.