  In this paper, we estimate the impact of national lockdown on COVID-19
related total and daily deaths, per million people, in select European
countries. In particular, we compare countries that imposed a nationwide
lockdown (Treatment group); Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Norway,
Spain, United Kingdom (UK), and the US, to Sweden (Control group) that did not
impose national lockdown using a changes-in-changes (CIC) estimation model. The
key advantage of the CIC model as compared to the standard
difference-in-difference model is that CIC allows for mean and variance of the
outcomes to change over time in the absence of any policy intervention, and CIC
accounts for endogeneity in the choice of policy intervention. Our results
indicate that in contrast to Sweden, which did not impose a national lockdown,
Germany, and to some extent, the US were the two countries where nationwide
lockdown had a significant impact on the reduction in COVID-19 related total
and daily deaths per million people. In Norway and Denmark, there was no
significant impact on total and daily deaths per million people relative to
Sweden. Whereas in other countries; Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, and the UK,
the effect of the lockdown was in the opposite direction, that is, they
experienced significantly higher COVID-19 related total and daily deaths per
million people, post the lockdown as compared to Sweden. Our results suggest
that the impact of nationwide lockdown on COVID-19 related total and daily
deaths per million people varied from one country to another.
