Bilal Sali

• Kordt, Amund H.; Nymoen, Ragnar; Sali, Bilal & Bårdsen, Gunnar (2025). Econometric modelling of public health and the economy: COVID-19 in Norway. Economic Analysis and Policy. ISSN 0313-5926. 88, p. 1633–1651. doi: 10.1016/j.eap.2025.10.037. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The paper documents an empirical model of the joint effects on health and the economy of the COVID-19 virus in Norway. The model is an extension of the econometric framework which has been used for real time forecasting of new cases and hospital beds during the pandemic. An important premise for modelling has been the extension of the daily measurement system to include daily indicators of economic activity. We build on existing methods for temporal disaggregation, and “dailylize” the monthly GDP data by the use of a daily Financial News Index. We distinguish between awareness effects and the effects of endogenous changes in containment policies. We find significant effects on the economy through both channels. We also find that the effects of containment policies were more negative in 2020 than later in the pandemic. A plausible explanation is that firms, households and the government learned how to adapt to the pandemic.

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• Sali, Bilal (2025). Constructing Counterfactuals from Cointegration Relationships. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Some events, such as policy changes or economic shocks, affect large economic entities like countries, regions, cities, or sectors. This paper develops a method for counterfactual estimation using time-series properties when there are limited number of cross-sectional units. We propose selecting control units that are irreducibly cointegrated (IC) with the treated unit, and further refine this by requiring weak exogeneity with respect to the cointegration. IC sets ensure that the selected control units share common long- run trends with the treated and are essential to the cointegrating relationship. To avoid possible spillover or general equilibrium effects, we refine selection by requiring weak exogeneity such that selected control units do not respond to long-run deviations of the treated unit (i.e., no long-run feedback). Applied to the German reunification, our method identifies a small set of valid controls and estimates an initial real GDP increase of 4.5%, reversing to -10% over a decade. The results align with prior studies of Abadie et al. (2015) and Harvey and Thiele (2021) and demonstrate the method’s credibility. When refined by weak exogeneity, the results align almost identically with the other studies by using different sets of control units

• Kordt, Amund H.; Sali, Bilal; Nymoen, Ragnar & Bårdsen, Gunnar (2025). Econometric modelling of public health and the economy: COVID-19 in Norway. Full text in Research Archive
• Bårdsen, Gunnar; Kordt, Amund H.; Nymoen, Ragnar & Sali, Bilal (2025). Econometric modelling of public health and the economy; COVID-19 in Norway. Full text in Research Archive
• Sali, Bilal (2024). Trend and Cycle Decomposition using Step Indicators. Full text in Research Archive
• Sali, Bilal (2024). Integration and Cointegration Implications of Bernanke and Blanchard Pandemic Era Inflation Model. Full text in Research Archive
• Bårdsen, Gunnar; Kordt, Amund Arthur Hanson; Nymoen, Ragnar & Sali, Bilal (2024). Econometric modelling of public health and the economy; COVID-19 in Norway. Full text in Research Archive

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