Components for Measuring the Efficiency of the Intervention Measures to Support Business, Initiated and Implemented by the Government of Lithuania during the First Lockdown

Abstract

A lockdown is a set of restrictive actions, in the implementation of which countries face a case of chain reaction: In order to protect human lives and health, the states, due to imbalances in fiscal and monetary policies caused by uncollected planned revenues and unplanned excessive budget expenditures, experience a socio-economic recession. The current paper focuses on the first lockdown implemented in Lithuania to control the spread of COVID-19, which took place from 16 March, 2020 until 16 June, 2020. The main object of the paper is the components that defined the efficiency of the government intervention measures intended to support businesses affected by the first lockdown regime. By generating the mentioned components, we followed the principle of the philosophy of sustainable development: the interdependence of economic, social, environmental, and institutional elements; coherence; and sustainable development. Efficiency is the art of choice, where it is necessary to anticipate the final aim, resulting in maximum benefit from the arrangement of the available limited resources. However, in order to measure the effectiveness of government interventions, we were faced with differences in interpretations of the measurement of the effectiveness of policy decisions. In the course of the research, after analysing secondary data, we identified and, by means of modelling techniques, visualised the main components to estimate the efficiency of the government intervention measures. The theoretical model demonstrated that economic instruments—volume, price, time, transparency, and results—defined the efficiency of their implementation.