The COVID‐19 crisis: A public choice view

Peter Zweifel

Economic Affairs, 2020, vol. 40, issue 3, 395-405

Abstract: Many observers have been puzzled by the sight of otherwise freedom‐loving citizens consenting to the stripping of their civil rights and the massive budgetary expansion of their governments in response to the COVID‐19 pandemic. Conversely, governments who ‘kept their cool’ such as those of Brazil and Sweden were heavily criticised by the Western media. Adopting James Buchanan's contractarian approach, this article seeks to model how the interplay between citizens and their government is affected by a health crisis. Citizens' increased willingness to pay for improved control of risks is found to play a major role.

Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/ecaf.12431

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:ecaffa:v:40:y:2020:i:3:p:395-405

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0265-0665

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Affairs is currently edited by Philip Booth

More articles in Economic Affairs from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().