The timing and aggressiveness of early government response to COVID-19: Political systems, societal culture, and more

Job loss and mental disorders: International evidence from the early stages of COVID-19 outbreak

Using a rich individual level dataset from six countries, we examine the relationship between job loss and mental disorders during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. We consider four indicators of mental disorders based on their severity, viz. anxiety, insomnia, boredom, and loneliness. We draw our conclusions based on two groups of countries that differ by the timing of their peak infections count. Using a logit and a two-stage least squares (TSLS) regression methods, we find that the people who lost their jobs due to the pandemic are more likely to suffer from mental disorders, especially insomnia and loneliness. Additionally, people with financial liabilities, such as housing mortgages, are among those vulnerable to anxiety. Women, urban residents, youth, low-income groups, and tobacco users are more prone to mental disorders. The findings from this research have significant policy implications on infectious disease control measures and mental health conditions due to lockdowns and social distancing.

Economic impact of COVID-19 across national boundaries: The role of government responses

This Research Note provides an assessment of the burgeoning interdisciplinary literature surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on both individuals and firms, with a particular focus on the heterogeneity in government responses and their implications for international finance and IB research. In particular, we discuss disparities in vaccine distribution, government policy responses, and impacts in low-income versus high-income countries, as well as lessons learned from the pandemic. We describe an important source of data in this area and provide ideas for future research.

The Politics of Covid-19 Containment Policies in europe

Do partisan preferences, the electoral system, checks on government, political fragmentation, civil liberties and trust contribute to explaining the stringency of containment policies in European countries? Empirical studies suggest that political science theories have helped very little in understanding European democracies' political response to the pandemic's first wave. We argue in this article that the negligible effect of politics, broadly defined, is confined to the first wave and that during subsequent waves over the autumn 2020 to spring 2021 season some of the above political factors contribute to our understanding of variation in countries' response. Employing a sample of 26 European democracies analyzing daily data on the stringency of adopted containment policies we provide evidence that politics does not matter during the first wave but is substantively important during later waves.

What matters the most in curbing early COVID-19 mortality? A cross-country necessary condition analysis

COVID-19 represents a turbulent problem: a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous crisis, in which bounded-rational policymakers may not be able to do everything right, but must do critical things right in order to reduce the death toll. This study conceptualizes these critical things as necessary conditions (NCs) that must be absent to prevent high early mortality from occurring. We articulate a policy-institution-demography framework that includes seven factors as NC candidates for high early COVID-19 mortality. Using necessary condition analysis (NCA), this study pinpoints high levels of a delayed first response, political decentralization, elderly populations, and urbanization as four NCs that have inflicted high early COVID-19 mortality across 110 countries. The results highlight the critical role of agility as a key dimension of robust governance solutions-a swift early public-health response as a malleable policy action-in curbing early COVID-19 deaths, particularly for politically decentralized and highly urbanized countries with aging populations.

The vaccine equity crisis is a stress test for all future major environmental challenges

The vaccine equity crisis has an extra element that makes it crucial for our capacity to tackle future major societal challenges. Unlike most of these, including the climate one, the current pandemic causes major damage that is directly observable in the very short term, that is, within the political cycle of the incumbent policymakers. If not even this kind of crisis with directly observable damage is able to influence the incentive structure of policymakers and lead to the adoption of timely and effective measures, there is no reason to expect that this would ever happen for crises whose effects largely materialize in future political cycles. As a consequence, if we fail to tackle this particular crisis effectively now, we are creating an enormous credibility problem for future crises that could seriously undermine our capacity to reach binding agreements in the future.

COVID-19 vaccine rollout-scale and speed carry different implications for corruption

The sanctioning of different coronavirus vaccines (with some approved by regulators for public delivery, and others in the pipeline) has met with relief by many sections of the public and the government. However, partly due to the damages associated with the pandemic and the ensuing euphoria over vaccines' arrival, some of the challenges are mostly being ignored or are not recognized. This paper identifies some pitfalls and drawbacks in vaccine delivery. We argue that the somewhat unique tension between the speed of vaccine delivery and its scale can create opportunities for corrupt behavior that are often at odds with effective means to check abuse. While data on instances of abuse will emerge over time, it is useful to point out different avenues of abuse so that some preventive government actions can be undertaken. Specifically, we argue that the potential for out of turn delivery of vaccines and the stockpiling by unauthorized agents creates incentives for corruption, with the public or bureaucrats initiating corrupt transactions. An understanding of the potential avenues for corruption should guide the formulation of appropriate corruption-control policies and similar challenges that will be faced by policy makers in addressing future pandemics.