Citation

Mello M, Moscelli G. J. Econ. Behav. Organ. 2022; 200: 1025-1052.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.jebo.2022.07.008

PMID

35873867

PMCID

PMC9295382

Abstract

Natural disasters raise challenging trade-offs between public health safety and inalienable rights like the active involvement in political choices through voting. We exploit a quasi-experimental setting provided by multiple ballots across regions and municipalities during the Italian 2020 elections to estimate the effect of voters' turnout on the spread of COVID-19. By employing an event-study design with a two-stage Control Function strategy, we find that post-poll new COVID infections increased by an average of 1.1% for each additional percentage point of turnout. Based on these estimates and real political events, we also show through a simulation that in-person voting during a high-infection regime may have a large impact on public health outcomes, more than doubling new infections, deaths and hospitalizations. These findings suggest that policy-makers' responses to natural disasters should be flexible and contingent to the emergency severity, in order to minimize social costs for citizens.

Language: en

Keywords

Public health; COVID-19; Civic capital; Control Function; Endogeneity; Event study; Voting