“Contagion”: The determinants of governments’ public health responses to COVID-19 all around the world
“Contagion”: The determinants of governments’ public health responses to COVID-19 all around the world
Auteur : Simon Porcher
Introduction:
To respond to the COVID-19 outbreak, governments all around the world have implemented public health measures that have resulted in different policies to contain the spread of the virus and to support the economy. These measures include travel restrictions, bans on mass gatherings, school closures and domestic lockdowns, among others. This paper presents a unique dataset of governments’ responses to COVID-19. The dataset codes the policy interventions with their dates at the country level for more than 180 countries. To facilitate cross-country and crosstime comparisons, the paper builds on different measures to create an index of the rigidity of governments’ responses to COVID-19. The index shows that responses to the pandemic vary across countries and across time. The paper also investigates the determinants of governments’ public health responses by focusing on the timing of contamination, the health risk of the population and health quality.