Democracy and COVID-19 outcomes

Gokhan Karabulut, Klaus Zimmermann (), Mehmet Bilgin and Asli Cansin Doker ()

Economics Letters, 2021, vol. 203, issue C

Abstract: More democratic countries are often expected to fail at providing a fast, strong, and effective response when facing a crisis such as COVID-19. This could result in higher infections and more negative health effects, but hard evidence to prove this claim is missing for the new disease. Studying the association with five different democracy measures, this study shows that while the infection rates of the disease do indeed appear to be higher for more democratic countries so far, their observed case fatality rates are lower. There is also a negative association between case fatality rates and government attempts to censor media. However, such censorship relates positively to the infection rate.

Keywords: Democracy; COVID-19; Coronavirus; Pandemic; Lockdown; Media censoring (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C30 D72 I19 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (28)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Democracy and COVID-19 Outcomes (2021)
Working Paper: Democracy and COVID-19 Outcomes (2021)
Working Paper: Democracy and COVID-19 Outcomes (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:203:y:2021:i:c:s0165176521001178

DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2021.109840

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