Country Performance during the Covid-19 Pandemic: Externalities, Coordination and the Role of Institutions

Santiago Lago-Peñas, Jorge Martinez-Vazquez () and Agnese Sacchi

International Center for Public Policy Working Paper Series, at AYSPS, GSU from International Center for Public Policy, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University

Abstract: The Covid-19 pandemic is one of the most powerful examples of negative externalities across the globe. We focus on the role played by institutions at the country level in fighting the spread of Covid-19 by making policy coordination more difficult or, on the contrary, more effective. Specifically, we consider the type of political regimes, political fragmentation and decentralization settings. We use the most recently available information on Covid-19 performance for up to 115 countries around the world. Our main results show that having either democracies or autocracies does not represent a crucial issue for successfully addressing the pandemic. Most significantly, countries with centralized political parties, which fundamentally allow for better coordination at the national level, perform significantly better than those with decentralized ones. However, the assignment of policy responsibilities to sub-national governments is an impediment in fighting the Covid-19 emergency.

Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2020-11
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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https://icepp.gsu.edu/files/2020/11/paper2018.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Country performance during the Covid-19 pandemic: externalities, coordination, and the role of institutions (2022)
Working Paper: Country performance during the Covid-19 pandemic: Externalities, coordination and the role of institutions (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ays:ispwps:paper2018

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