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Electoral concerns reduce restrictive measures during the COVID-19 pandemic()

The outbreak of COVID-19 has called for swift action by governments, often involving the adoption of restrictive measures such as lockdowns. In this context, leaders have faced a trade-off between imposing stringent measures to limit the contagion, and minimizing the short-run costs on their nationa...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Pulejo, Massimo, Querubín, Pablo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier B.V. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7980214/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33776156
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2021.104387
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author Pulejo, Massimo
Querubín, Pablo
author_facet Pulejo, Massimo
Querubín, Pablo
author_sort Pulejo, Massimo
collection PubMed
description The outbreak of COVID-19 has called for swift action by governments, often involving the adoption of restrictive measures such as lockdowns. In this context, leaders have faced a trade-off between imposing stringent measures to limit the contagion, and minimizing the short-run costs on their national economy, which could impact their electoral prospects. Leveraging on both the timing of elections and the constitutional term limits faced by leaders in presidential systems, we document how incumbents who can run for re-election implement less stringent restrictions when the election is closer in time. The effect is driven by measures more likely to have a negative economic impact. This shows how electoral concerns help explain the observed differences in the response to the onset of the COVID-19 epidemic across different countries.
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spelling pubmed-79802142021-03-23 Electoral concerns reduce restrictive measures during the COVID-19 pandemic() Pulejo, Massimo Querubín, Pablo J Public Econ Article The outbreak of COVID-19 has called for swift action by governments, often involving the adoption of restrictive measures such as lockdowns. In this context, leaders have faced a trade-off between imposing stringent measures to limit the contagion, and minimizing the short-run costs on their national economy, which could impact their electoral prospects. Leveraging on both the timing of elections and the constitutional term limits faced by leaders in presidential systems, we document how incumbents who can run for re-election implement less stringent restrictions when the election is closer in time. The effect is driven by measures more likely to have a negative economic impact. This shows how electoral concerns help explain the observed differences in the response to the onset of the COVID-19 epidemic across different countries. Elsevier B.V. 2021-06 2021-03-20 /pmc/articles/PMC7980214/ /pubmed/33776156 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2021.104387 Text en © 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Article
Pulejo, Massimo
Querubín, Pablo
Electoral concerns reduce restrictive measures during the COVID-19 pandemic()
title Electoral concerns reduce restrictive measures during the COVID-19 pandemic()
title_full Electoral concerns reduce restrictive measures during the COVID-19 pandemic()
title_fullStr Electoral concerns reduce restrictive measures during the COVID-19 pandemic()
title_full_unstemmed Electoral concerns reduce restrictive measures during the COVID-19 pandemic()
title_short Electoral concerns reduce restrictive measures during the COVID-19 pandemic()
title_sort electoral concerns reduce restrictive measures during the covid-19 pandemic()
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7980214/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33776156
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2021.104387
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