The Pre-Pandemic Political Economy Determinants of Lockdown Severity

Download or read book The Pre-Pandemic Political Economy Determinants of Lockdown Severity written by Vincent Miozzi and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We investigate the determinants of the severity of U.S. state-level lockdown regulations adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic. We employ a new measure of Lockdown Regulatory Freedom from Miozzi and Powell (2023b) to investigate whether pre-pandemic measures of economic freedom, political variables, and measures of COVID-19 exposure and severity impacted the severity of subsequent lockdowns. Our main finding is that the severity of a state's lockdown regulations were primarily determined by pre-pandemic levels of economic freedom and the political affiliation of a state's governor.