The Political Economy of Early COVID-19 Interventions in US States

Martin Gonzalez-Eiras and Dirk Niepelt

No 16906, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: We investigate how politico-economic factors shaped government responses to the spread of COVID-19. Our simple framework uses epidemiological, economic and politico-economic arguments. Confronting the theory with US state level data we find strong evidence for partisanship even when we control for fundamentals including the electorate's political views. Moreover, we detect an important role for the proximity of elections which we interpret as indicative of career concerns. Finally, we find suggestive evidence for complementarities between voluntary activity reductions and government imposed restrictions.

Keywords: Covid-19; Lockdown; Politics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP16906 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The political economy of early COVID-19 interventions in US states (2022)
Working Paper: The Political Economy of Early Covid-19 Interventions in US States (2022)
Working Paper: The Political Economy of Early COVID-19 Interventions in US States (2022)
Working Paper: The Political Economy of Early COVID-19 Interventions in US States (2022)
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:cpr:ceprdp:16906

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP16906

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().