Stowell, N., Immormino, J., Ortiz Salazar, A., Zeng, Y., & Arbetman-Rabinowitz, M. (2022). Canadian Foreign Policy Journal, 1-21.

This paper examines the structural political and economic determinants of country-level severity of the COVID-19 pandemic. By conducting an empirical analysis of 118 countries through the first wave of the pandemic, we show that – unlike natural disasters and past viral outbreaks – national wealth has not insulated countries from the most severe outcomes of COVID-19. Further, we show that timely and responsive policy measures are vital, but so too is the capacity of governments to compel their populations to adhere the chosen policies. While a society's age structure is a key determinant of its COVID-19 mortality rate, we demonstrate that political capacity, combined with an appropriate policy response, outweighs economic and demographic factors in forecasting within-country severity of the pandemic.

Rogers, M. Z., Zeng, Y., Marx, A., Poynor, M., & Lu, M. (2021). Frontiers in Political Science, 3, 69

Among the many striking features of the COVID 19 pandemic is the geographic heterogeneity of its incidence and its disproportionate effects on low income people. We examine links between individual risk and COVID 19 outcomes in the federal context in Mexico characterized by high socioeconomic and political heterogeneity. Using highly detailed individual mobility data for five Mexican cities, we document the relationship between local income and education factors and the behaviors associated with COVID 19 risk after the national lockdown: staying home, going to work, and going other places. While low income people are disproportionately likely to contract COVID 19 and die from illnesses associated with COVID 19 in Mexico, we find very mixed evidence that people living in low income urban census blocs are engaging in observably riskier behaviors.

Salazar, A. O., Zeng, Y., & Arbetman-Rabinowitz, M. (2022). Canadian Foreign Policy Journal, 1-21.

We analyze the first wave of COVID-19 fatalities in Spain at the subnational level to identify why some Autonomous Communities (ACs) were more successful at minimizing mortality levels. Our work adds to emerging literature on policy implications of pandemics and the role of governments in containing crises. Additionally, because national responses to crises are not homogeneous, we develop empirical measures of subnational political capacity. We investigate the relative capacity of governments in mobilizing the population to follow national health policy recommendations and extracting resources to implement those policies. Furthermore, we examine the effects of political alignment between the subnational and central governments in determining the country’s success containing the outbreak. Through a random-effects panel regression and a generalized additive model, we find that wealth and demography account for half of the variance in COVID-19 deaths across ACs, while including political capacity and alignment increases the variance explained above 70%.

Wahedi, A. U., Zeng, Y., & Arbetman-Rabinowitz, M. (2022). Canadian Foreign Policy Journal, 1-19.

South Africa has been the worst hit by Covid-19 on the African continent and is experiencing devastating consequences. The goal of this study is to look at the role of underlying socio-economic factors and the quality of government policy responses in mitigating the impact of Covid-19 in South Africa against the backdrop of a multi-decade HIV epidemic. In the first phase of our analysis, we look at South Africa’s HIV experience. This analysis, using national level yearly data, shows that government capability plays an important role in mitigating the socio-economic consequences of the HIV epidemic. In addition, the results show that rather than the level of income and wealth being the most decisive factors, the ability of the government to mobilize and influence the population’s behavior is key to mitigating the impact of Covid-19 pandemic. With the arrival of several vaccines around the globe, these findings regarding the centrality of government capacity at the national as well as the subnational level have important implications for addressing the Covid-19 pandemic and future disasters.