Civil Liberties in Times of Crisis

Marcella Alsan (), Luca Braghieri, Sarah Eichmeyer, Minjeong Joyce Kim, Stefanie Stantcheva and David Yang

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2023, vol. 15, issue 4, 389-421

Abstract: We study people's willingness to trade off civil liberties for increased health security in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic by deploying representative surveys involving around 550,000 responses across 15 countries. We document significant heterogeneity across groups in willingness to sacrifice rights: citizens disadvantaged by income, education, or race are less willing to sacrifice rights than their more advantaged peers in every country. Leveraging naturally occurring variation and experimental approaches, we estimate a one standard deviation increase in health insecurity increases willingness to sacrifice civil liberties by 68–83 percent of the difference between the average Chinese and US citizen.

JEL-codes: D12 D91 I12 I18 K38 O17 P36 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Working Paper: Civil Liberties in Times of Crisis (2020)
Working Paper: Civil Liberties in Times of Crisis (2020)
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DOI: 10.1257/app.20210736

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