Democracy and COVID-19 Outcomes

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

No 15722, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

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: 2021-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

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Journal Article: 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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