The 1918 flu pandemic constituted an exogenous shock on economic activity. In this paper, we condition the economic importance of these shocks on the level of economic freedom measured by the Historical Index of Economic Liberty project to test whether freer economies fared better. Our argument is that higher levels of economic freedom meant a greater ability to adjust to shocks by reducing frictions in the reallocation of resources and the reorganization of economic activity. We find that higher levels of economic freedom mitigated the pandemic's effect. We link this finding with the literature on economic freedom and crises. (JEL I15, N10, N30)

中文翻译：

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经济自由与1918年大流行的经济后果

1918年的流感大流行对经济活动构成了外源性冲击。在本文中，我们将这些冲击的经济重要性置于“经济自由历史指数”项目衡量的经济自由水平上，以检验较自由的经济体是否表现得更好。我们的论点是，更高水平的经济自由意味着通过减少资源重新分配和经济活动的重组中的摩擦，具有更大的适应冲击的能力。我们发现，较高的经济自由度减轻了大流行的影响。我们将此发现与有关经济自由和危机的文献联系起来。（ JEL I15，N10，N30）