Political regimes and deaths in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic

Gabriel Cepaluni, Michael T. Dorsch, Réka Branyiczki

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

This article provides a quantitative examination of the link between political institutions and deaths during the first 100 days of the COVID-19 pandemic. We demonstrate that countries with more democratic political institutions experienced deaths on a larger per capita scale than less democratic countries. The result is robust to the inclusion of many relevant controls, a battery of estimation techniques and estimation with instrumental variables for the institutional measures. Additionally, we examine the extent to which COVID-19 deaths were impacted heterogeneously by policy responses across types of political institutions. Policy responses in democracies were less effective in reducing deaths in the early stages of the crisis. The results imply that democratic political institutions may have a disadvantage in responding quickly to pandemics.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)27-53
Number of pages27
JournalJournal of Public Finance and Public Choice
Volume37
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 2022

Keywords

  • COVID-19
  • democracy
  • pandemics
  • political institutions

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