Open Access Journal Article

Is democracy affecting the economic policy responses to COVID-19? A cross-country analysis

by João Ricardo Costa Filho a orcid  and  António Neto b,* orcid
a
NOVA School of Business and Economics, Carcavelos, Portugal
b
University College London, London, United Kingdom
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
EAL  2024, 44; 3(1), 44; https://doi.org/10.58567/eal03010001
Received: 10 July 2023 / Accepted: 16 August 2023 / Published Online: 15 March 2024

Abstract

How does democracy relate to the initial economic policy responses to Covid-19? Using a cross country analysis, we find that countries with a higher degree of democracy have stronger economic policy responses than their peers. However, when we separate monetary and financial policies from fiscal policy, democracy is not associated with the latter when we control for the income level of a country. Finally, for countries with lower levels of labor participation, high levels of income inequality are associated with weaker policy responses.


Copyright: © 2024 by Filho and Neto. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Share and Cite

ACS Style
Filho, J. R. C.; Neto, A. Is democracy affecting the economic policy responses to COVID-19? A cross-country analysis. Economic Analysis Letters, 2024, 3, 44. https://doi.org/10.58567/eal03010001
AMA Style
Filho J R C, Neto A. Is democracy affecting the economic policy responses to COVID-19? A cross-country analysis. Economic Analysis Letters; 2024, 3(1):44. https://doi.org/10.58567/eal03010001
Chicago/Turabian Style
Filho, João R. C.; Neto, António 2024. "Is democracy affecting the economic policy responses to COVID-19? A cross-country analysis" Economic Analysis Letters 3, no.1:44. https://doi.org/10.58567/eal03010001
APA style
Filho, J. R. C., & Neto, A. (2024). Is democracy affecting the economic policy responses to COVID-19? A cross-country analysis. Economic Analysis Letters, 3(1), 44. https://doi.org/10.58567/eal03010001

Article Metrics

Article Access Statistics

References

  1. Bitara, M., Ouadghirib, I. E., and J. Peillex (2023). A cross-institutional exploratory investigation of COVID-19 spread: formal vs. informal institutions. Applied Economics, 55 (35): 4146-4163. https://doi.org/10.1080/00036846.2022.2125495
  2. Correia, S. (2016). A feasible estimator for linear models with multi-way fixed effects. Preprint at http://scorreia.com/research/hdfe.pdf
  3. Correia, S., Luck, S., and Verner, E. (1918). Pandemics depress the economy, public health interventions do not: Evidence from the 1918 flu. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3561560
  4. DeLong, J. B., Summers, L. H., Feldstein, M., and Ramey, V. A. (2012). Fiscal policy in a depressed economy. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, pages 233–297. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23287218
  5. Elgin, C., Basbug, G., and Yalaman, A. (2020). Economic Policy Responses to a Pandemic: Developing the covid-19 Economic Stimulus Index. Covid Economics: Vetted and Real-Time Papers, 3. https://cepr.org/system/files/publication-files/101355-covid_economics_issue_3.pdf#page=44
  6. Farzanegan, M. and H. F. Gholipour (2023). COVID-19 fatalities and internal conflict: Does government economic support matter? European Journal of Political Economy, 78:102368. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2023.102368
  7. Feenstra, R. C., Inklaar, R., and Timmer, M. P. (2015). The next generation of the Penn World Table. American Economic Review, 105(10): 3150–82. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20130954
  8. Ferraresi, M., Kotsogiannis, C., Rizzo, L., and R. Secomandi (2020). The ‘Great Lockdown’ and its determinants. Economics Letters, 197: 109628. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2020.109628
  9. Guerrieri, V., Lorenzoni, G., Straub, L., and Werning, I. (2020). Macroeconomic Implications of COVID-19: Can Negative Supply Shocks Cause Demand Shortages? American Economic Review, 112(5): 1437-1474. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20201063
  10. Guimaraes, P. and Portugal, P. (2010). A simple feasible procedure to fit models with high-dimensional fixed effects. The Stata Journal, 10(4): 628–649. https://doi.org/10.1177/1536867X1101000406
  11. Kaplan, G., Moll, B., and Violante, G. (2020). Pandemics according to HANK. PowerPoint presentation, LSE, 31 March.
  12. Solt, F. (2016). The standardized world income inequality database. Social science quarterly, 97(5), 1267-1281. https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.12295
  13. Toxvaer, F. (2020). Voluntary and mandatory social distancing: Evidence on Covid-19 exposure rates from Chinese provinces and selected countries. Covid Economics: Vetted and Real-Time Papers, 7. https://doi.org/10.3386/w27039