IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/glodps/861.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Confidence in public institutions is critical in containing the COVID-19 pandemic

Author

Listed:
  • Adamecz-Völgyi, Anna
  • Szabó-Morvai, Ágnes

Abstract

This paper investigates the relative importance of confidence in public institutions to explain cross-country differences in the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic. We extend the related literature by employing regression and machine learning methods to identify the most critical predictors of deaths attributed to the pandemic. We find that a one standard deviation increase (e.g., the actual difference between the US and Finland) in confidence is associated with 350.9 fewer predicted deaths per million inhabitants. Confidence in public institutions is one of the most important predictors of deaths attributed to COVID-19, compared to country-level measures of individual health risks, the health system, demographics, economic and political development, and social capital. Our results suggest that effective policy implementation requires citizens to cooperate with their governments, and willingness to cooperate relies on confidence in public institutions.

Suggested Citation

  • Adamecz-Völgyi, Anna & Szabó-Morvai, Ágnes, 2021. "Confidence in public institutions is critical in containing the COVID-19 pandemic," GLO Discussion Paper Series 861, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:glodps:861
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/234563/1/GLO-DP-0861.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Achim Ahrens & Christian B. Hansen & Mark E. Schaffer, 2020. "lassopack: Model selection and prediction with regularized regression in Stata," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 20(1), pages 176-235, March.
    2. Thomas Hale & Noam Angrist & Rafael Goldszmidt & Beatriz Kira & Anna Petherick & Toby Phillips & Samuel Webster & Emily Cameron-Blake & Laura Hallas & Saptarshi Majumdar & Helen Tatlow, 2021. "A global panel database of pandemic policies (Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker)," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 5(4), pages 529-538, April.
    3. Karabulut, Gokhan & Zimmermann, Klaus F. & Bilgin, Mehmet Huseyin & Doker, Asli Cansin, 2021. "Democracy and COVID-19 outcomes," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 203(C).
    4. Mr. Pragyan Deb & Davide Furceri & Mr. Jonathan David Ostry & Nour Tawk, 2020. "The Effect of Containment Measures on the COVID-19 Pandemic," IMF Working Papers 2020/159, International Monetary Fund.
    5. Kahanec, Martin & Lafférs, Lukáš & Schmidpeter, Bernhard, 2021. "The Impact of Mass Antigen Testing for COVID-19 on the Prevalence of the Disease," GLO Discussion Paper Series 775, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    6. Elizabeth J. Williamson & Alex J. Walker & Krishnan Bhaskaran & Seb Bacon & Chris Bates & Caroline E. Morton & Helen J. Curtis & Amir Mehrkar & David Evans & Peter Inglesby & Jonathan Cockburn & Helen, 2020. "Factors associated with COVID-19-related death using OpenSAFELY," Nature, Nature, vol. 584(7821), pages 430-436, August.
    7. Martin Kahanec & Lukáš Lafférs & Bernhard Schmidpeter, 2021. "The impact of repeated mass antigen testing for COVID-19 on the prevalence of the disease," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 34(4), pages 1105-1140, October.
    8. Elgar, Frank J. & Stefaniak, Anna & Wohl, Michael J.A., 2020. "The trouble with trust: Time-series analysis of social capital, income inequality, and COVID-19 deaths in 84 countries," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 263(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Costa-Font, Joan & Vilaplana-Prieto, Cristina, 2023. "Trusting the health system and COVID 19 restriction compliance," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 118267, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Albæk, Karsten, 2021. "Covid-19 epidemien i Vesteuropa: betydningen af befolkningstæthed, andel ældre og tillid for dødelighed og økonomisk aktivitet Covid-19," Nationaløkonomisk tidsskrift, Nationaløkonomisk Forening, vol. 2021(1), pages 1-17.
    3. Costa-Font, Joan & Vilaplana-Prieto, Cristina, 2023. "Trusting the Health System and COVID 19 Restriction Compliance," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 49(C).
    4. Joan Costa-i-Font & Cristina Vilaplana-Prieto, 2023. "Health System Trust and Compliance with Covid-19 Restrictions," CESifo Working Paper Series 10291, CESifo.
    5. Costa-Font, Joan & Vilaplana-Prieto, Cristina, 2023. "Health System Trust and Compliance with COVID-19 Restrictions," IZA Discussion Papers 15961, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Albæk, Karsten, 2021. "Covid-19 epidemien i Vesteuropa: betydningen af befolkningstæthed, andel ældre og tillid for dødelighed og økonomisk aktivitet," Nationaløkonomisk tidsskrift, Nationaløkonomisk Forening, vol. 2021(1), pages 1-17.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Toan Luu Duc Huynh & Duy Duong, 2022. "Government responses, democracy, and COVID-19 containment: a cross-country study," Economics and Business Letters, Oviedo University Press, vol. 11(3), pages 98-106.
    2. NARITA Yusuke & SUDO Ayumi, 2021. "Curse of Democracy: Evidence from 2020," Discussion papers 21034, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    3. Anna Godøy & Maja Weemes Grøtting & Rannveig Kaldager Hart, 2022. "Reopening schools in a context of low COVID-19 contagion: consequences for teachers, students and their parents," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 35(3), pages 935-961, July.
    4. Étienne Dagorn & Martina Dattilo & Matthieu Pourieux, 2022. "Preferences matter! Political Responses to the COVID-19 and Population’s Preferences," Economics Working Paper Archive (University of Rennes 1 & University of Caen) 2022-01, Center for Research in Economics and Management (CREM), University of Rennes 1, University of Caen and CNRS.
    5. Marco Due~nas & V'ictor Ortiz & Massimo Riccaboni & Francesco Serti, 2021. "Assessing the Impact of COVID-19 on Trade: a Machine Learning Counterfactual Analysis," Papers 2104.04570, arXiv.org.
    6. Yusuke Narita & Ayumi Sudo, 2021. "Curse of Democracy: Evidence from the 21st Century," Papers 2104.07617, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2021.
    7. David Turner & Balázs Égert & Yvan Guillemette & Jarmila Botev, 2021. "The tortoise and the hare: The race between vaccine rollout and new COVID variants," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 1672, OECD Publishing.
    8. Guilhem Cassan & Marc Sangnier, 2022. "The impact of 2020 French municipal elections on the spread of COVID-19," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 35(3), pages 963-988, July.
    9. Michael Bayerlein & Vanessa A. Boese & Scott Gates & Katrin Kamin & Syed Mansoob Murshed, 2021. "Populism and COVID-19: How Populist Governments (Mis)Handle the Pandemic," Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy, now publishers, vol. 2(3), pages 389-428, December.
    10. Majerčák Jozef & Vakulenko Sergej Petrovich, 2023. "The Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Population Mobility in the Czech Republic and Slovakia," LOGI – Scientific Journal on Transport and Logistics, Sciendo, vol. 14(1), pages 158-168, January.
    11. Kim, Kijin & Kim, Soyoung & Lee, Donghyun & Park, Cyn-Young, 2023. "Impacts of social distancing policy and vaccination during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Republic of Korea," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    12. Albæk, Karsten, 2021. "Covid-19 epidemien i Vesteuropa: betydningen af befolkningstæthed, andel ældre og tillid for dødelighed og økonomisk aktivitet Covid-19," Nationaløkonomisk tidsskrift, Nationaløkonomisk Forening, vol. 2021(1), pages 1-17.
    13. Phi-Hung Nguyen & Jung-Fa Tsai & Thanh-Tuan Dang & Ming-Hua Lin & Hong-Anh Pham & Kim-Anh Nguyen, 2021. "A Hybrid Spherical Fuzzy MCDM Approach to Prioritize Governmental Intervention Strategies against the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Case Study from Vietnam," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 9(20), pages 1-26, October.
    14. Jeon, Jeonghwan & Suvitha, Krishnan & Arshad, Noreen Izza & Kalaiselvan, Samayan & Narayanamoorthy, Samayan & Ferrara, Massimiliano & Ahmadian, Ali, 2023. "A probabilistic hesitant fuzzy MCDM approach to evaluate India’s intervention strategies against the COVID-19 pandemic," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    15. Albæk, Karsten, 2021. "Covid-19 epidemien i Vesteuropa: betydningen af befolkningstæthed, andel ældre og tillid for dødelighed og økonomisk aktivitet," Nationaløkonomisk tidsskrift, Nationaløkonomisk Forening, vol. 2021(1), pages 1-17.
    16. Lin, Thung-Hong & Chang, Min-Chiao & Chang, Chun-Chih & Chou, Ya-Hsuan, 2022. "Government-sponsored disinformation and the severity of respiratory infection epidemics including COVID-19: A global analysis, 2001–2020," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 296(C).
    17. Judit Temesvary & Andrew Wei, 2021. "Domestic Lending and the Pandemic: How Does Banks' Exposure to Covid-19 Abroad Affect Their Lending in the United States?," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2021-056r1, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.), revised 17 Nov 2021.
    18. Jacqueline Ruth & Steffen Willwacher & Oliver Korn, 2022. "Acceptance of Digital Sports: A Study Showing the Rising Acceptance of Digital Health Activities Due to the SARS-CoV-19 Pandemic," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(1), pages 1-16, January.
    19. Hannah Carver & Tracey Price & Danilo Falzon & Peter McCulloch & Tessa Parkes, 2022. "Stress and Wellbeing during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Mixed-Methods Exploration of Frontline Homelessness Services Staff Experiences in Scotland," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(6), pages 1-20, March.
    20. Phurichai Rungcharoenkitkul, 2021. "Macroeconomic effects of COVID‐19: A mid‐term review," Pacific Economic Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(4), pages 439-458, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    COVID-19; death rate; confidence in public institutions; machine learning;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • P16 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Capitalist Institutions; Welfare State

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:glodps:861. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/glabode.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.