Accounting for Global COVID-19 Diffusion Patterns, January - April 2020

Journal: Economics of Disasters and Climate Change (Sep. 2020)
Coauthors: Joshua Aizenman, Yothin Jinjarak, Rashad Ahmed and Weining Xin.
Assets: [ NBER Working Paper | Published Version | GitHub ]

We trace the cross-country associations between COVID-19 mortality, policy interventions aimed at limiting social contact, and their interactions with institutional and demographic characteristics. With a lag, more stringent pandemic policies were associated with lower mortality growth rates. The association between stricter pandemic policies and lower future mortality growth is more pronounced in countries with a greater proportion of the elderly and urban population, greater democratic freedoms, and larger international travel flows. Countries with greater policy stringency in place prior to the first death realized lower peak mortality rates and exhibited lower durations to the first mortality peak. In contrast, countries with higher initial mobility saw higher peak mortality rates in the first phase of the pandemic, and countries with a larger elderly population, a greater share of employees in vulnerable occupations, and a higher level of democracy took longer to reach their peak mortalities.