Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/326763 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
UNU-MERIT Working Papers No. 2021-004
Publisher: 
United Nations University (UNU), Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (UNU-MERIT), Maastricht
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.
Subjects: 
Democracy
COVID-19
Coronavirus
Pandemic
Lockdown
Media Censoring
JEL: 
D72
C30
P16
I19
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by-nc-sa Logo
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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