Investigating initial policy responses to COVID-19: evidence across 59 countries

Amrita Saha, Marco Carreras and Evert-Jan Quak

International Review of Applied Economics, 2022, vol. 36, issue 5-6, 762-791

Abstract: We conduct a review of different support measures adopted by 59 countries as an immediate response to the COVID-19 pandemic using an inclusive development lens across five key areas – health and safety, welfare, finance and credit, taxes and fees and structural measures. Using the information that a policy response was announced or implemented immediately, we propose and provide proxy measures for ‘access’, ‘short-term cover’ and ‘medium- to long-term adequacy’ using secondary data. Then, we construct a COVID-19 Response Inclusiveness (CRI) score – to capture the extent of ‘inclusiveness’ inherent in the support across populations, particularly for the marginalised and more vulnerable. We define and capture inclusion as the equitable distribution of social and economic gains, enhanced well-being and capabilities, with social and political empowerment. Finally, using simple cross-country regressions, we find the initial COVID-19 cases, changes in mobility and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita as key characteristics that were significantly associated with our measured extent of inclusiveness in countries’ response packages in the immediate aftermath of the crisis.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/02692171.2022.2130187 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:irapec:v:36:y:2022:i:5-6:p:762-791

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CIRA20

DOI: 10.1080/02692171.2022.2130187

Access Statistics for this article

International Review of Applied Economics is currently edited by Professor Malcolm Sawyer

More articles in International Review of Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().