Voting, Contagion and the Trade-Off between Public Health and Political Rights: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from the Italian 2020 Polls

Marco Mello () and Giuseppe Moscelli ()
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Marco Mello: University of Aberdeen

No 14658, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We exploit a quasi-experimental setting provided by an election day with multiple polls to estimate the effect of voters' turnout on the spread of new COVID-19 infections and to quantify the policy trade-off implied by postponing elections during high infection periods. We show that post-poll new COVID cases increased by 1.1% for each additional percentage point of turnout. The cost-benefits analysis based on our estimates and real political events shows that averting an early general election has saved Italy up to about e362 million in additional hospital care costs and e7.5 billion in values of life saved from COVID.

Keywords: control function; endogeneity; event-study; public health; civic capital; voting; COVID-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 D72 H51 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 75 pages
Date: 2021-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-eur, nep-hea, nep-isf and nep-pol
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Working Paper: Voting, contagion and the trade-off between public health and political rights: quasi-experimental evidence from the Italian 2020 polls (2021)
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