Cross-Country Comparisons of Covid-19: Policy, Politics and the Price of Life
dc.contributor.author | Balmford, B | |
dc.contributor.author | Annan, JD | |
dc.contributor.author | Hargreaves, JC | |
dc.contributor.author | Altoe, M | |
dc.contributor.author | Bateman, IJ | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2020-07-08T13:59:57Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2020-08-04 | |
dc.description.abstract | Coronavirus has claimed the lives of over half a million people world-wide and this death toll continues to rise rapidly each day. In the absence of a vaccine, non-clinical preventative measures have been implemented as the principal means of limiting deaths. However, these measures have caused unprecedented disruption to daily lives and economic activity. Given this developing crisis, the potential for a second wave of infections and the near certainty of future pandemics, lessons need to be rapidly gleaned from the available data. We address the challenges of cross-country comparisons by allowing for differences in reporting and variation in underlying socio-economic conditions between countries. Our analyses show that, to date, differences in policy interventions have out-weighed socio-economic variation in explaining the range of death rates observed in the data. Our epidemiological models show that across 8 countries a further week long delay in imposing lockdown would likely have cost more than half a million lives. Furthermore, those countries which acted more promptly saved substantially more lives than those that delayed. Linking decisions over the timing of lockdown and consequent deaths to economic data, we reveal the costs that national governments were implicitly prepared to pay to protect their citizens as reflected in the economic activity foregone to save lives. These ‘price of life’ estimates vary enormously between countries, ranging from as low as around $100,000 (e.g. the UK, US and Italy) to in excess of $1million (e.g. Denmark, Germany, New Zealand and Korea). The lowest estimates are further reduced once we correct for under-reporting of Covid-19 deaths. | en_GB |
dc.identifier.citation | Published online 4 August 2020 | en_GB |
dc.identifier.doi | 10.1007/s10640-020-00466-5 | |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10871/121831 | |
dc.language.iso | en | en_GB |
dc.publisher | Springer / European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists | en_GB |
dc.rights | © The Author(s) 2020. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. | |
dc.title | Cross-Country Comparisons of Covid-19: Policy, Politics and the Price of Life | en_GB |
dc.type | Article | en_GB |
dc.date.available | 2020-07-08T13:59:57Z | |
dc.identifier.issn | 0924-6460 | |
dc.description | This is the final version. Available on open access from Springer via the DOI in this record | en_GB |
dc.identifier.journal | Environmental and Resource Economics | en_GB |
dc.rights.uri | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ | en_GB |
dcterms.dateAccepted | 2020-07-09 | |
rioxxterms.version | VoR | en_GB |
rioxxterms.licenseref.startdate | 2020-07-09 | |
rioxxterms.type | Journal Article/Review | en_GB |
refterms.dateFCD | 2020-07-07T15:05:41Z | |
refterms.versionFCD | AM | |
refterms.dateFOA | 2020-08-24T14:57:12Z | |
refterms.panel | C | en_GB |
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Except where otherwise noted, this item's licence is described as © The Author(s) 2020. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License,
which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long
as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article
are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the
material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not
permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly
from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.