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Pandemics, economic freedom, and institutional trade-offs
European Journal of Law and Economics ( IF 1.266 ) Pub Date : 2021-07-19 , DOI: 10.1007/s10657-021-09704-7
Vincent Geloso 1 , Kelly Hyde 2 , Ilia Murtazashvili 2
Affiliation  

We argue that institutions are bundles that involve trade-offs in the government’s ability to provide public goods that affect public health. We hypothesize that the institutions underlying economic freedom affect the mix of diseases by reducing diseases of poverty relative to diseases of commerce (those associated with free movement of people, such as smallpox or COVID-19). We focus on smallpox and typhoid fever in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century in order to build on recent work that make arguments similar to ours, especially the framework Werner Troesken sets forth in The Pox of Liberty. Our evidence shows that economic freedom, in multiple periods of time and settings prior to the eradication of smallpox in the second half of the twentieth century, reduced typhoid mortality but had no effect on smallpox deaths. The implication for COVID-19 is that the trade-off between fighting the pandemic and preserving economic freedom may not be too severe in the short run. However, in the long run, the wealth benefits from economic freedom are likely to be crucial in reducing vulnerability to diseases of commerce primarily from their impact on comorbidities (such as diabetes and heart disease). Thus, economic freedom is on balance good for public health, which suggests that it, while requiring trade-offs, might be the best institutional bundle for dealing with pandemics.



中文翻译:

大流行、经济自由和制度取舍

我们认为,制度是在政府提供影响公共卫生的公共产品的能力方面进行权衡的捆绑。我们假设,经济自由背后的制度通过减少与商业疾病(与人员自由流动相关的疾病,如天花或 COVID-19)相关的贫困疾病来影响疾病的组合。我们专注于 19 世纪末和 20 世纪初的天花和伤寒,以建立与我们的观点相似的近期工作,特别是 Werner Troesken 在《自由之痘》中提出的框架. 我们的证据表明,在 20 世纪下半叶消灭天花之前的多个时期和环境中,经济自由降低了伤寒死亡率,但对天花死亡没有影响。对 COVID-19 的影响是,在抗击大流行和保持经济自由之间的权衡在短期内可能不会太严重。然而,从长远来看,经济自由带来的财富收益可能对降低商业疾病的脆弱性至关重要,主要是因为它们对合并症(如糖尿病和心脏病)的影响。因此,经济自由总体上对公共卫生有利,这表明它虽然需要权衡取舍,但可能是应对流行病的最佳制度捆绑。

更新日期:2021-07-19
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