COVID-19 infections and fatalities developments: empirical evidence for OECD countries and newly industrialized economie
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COVID-19 infections and fatalities developments: empirical evidence for OECD countries and newly industrialized economies Lucas Bretschger 1 & Elise Grieg 1 & Paul J. J. Welfens 2 & Tian Xiong 2 Published online: 14 October 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract This paper presents empirical results on coronavirus infection and fatality rates from cross-country regressions for OECD economies and a sample of middle- and high-income countries. We include environmental, economic, medical, and policy variables in our analysis to explain the number of corona cases and deaths per million. We find a significant positive impact of local air pollution on infection rates in the whole sample and on fatality rates for OECD countries. Obesity rates have a positive effect on cases and deaths across the different estimation equations. The strategy of aiming to achieve herd immunity has a significant positive effect on infections as well as on death rates. The first affected countries have significantly higher mortality rates, revealing the lack of experience and medical capacity to deal with the pandemic in an initial phase. Postponing – and fighting the pandemic could save lives in many countries and generate considerable economic benefits. Other medical and policy variables discussed in the public sphere do not show a significant impact in the regression analysis. Our results suggest that improving air quality and fighting obesity helps reduce the negative effects of a coronavirus pandemic significantly. Policy options for fighting a second epidemic wave should take into account the results from this study in order to optimize global epidemic policy. Keywords Coronavirus pandemic . Fatality rates . Air pollution . OECD countries . Newly
industrialized countries . Health systems . Environmental policy JEL Classification F63 . H12 . I10 . I18 . Q53
* Paul J. J. Welfens [email protected]–wuppertal.de Extended author information available on the last page of the article
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1 Introduction The coronavirus pandemic is a historical challenge for the world economy – in medical as well as economic and political terms. To achieve an understanding of the numbers of infections (cases) and fatalities from the novel coronavirus, it is crucial to have an adequate analytical framework and to come up with significant empirical results which will, of course, be relevant for economists, the business community, medical researchers and policymakers worldwide. One straightforward analytical approach is to start with a simple consideration: Negative pollution externalities are a key topic of environmental economic research - diseases, particularly communicable diseases, are another important form of negative impact on both human well-being and the economy at large. They can cause great damage, especially when they occur on a large scale, such as the recent coronavirus pandemic and the associated disease known as COVID-19.1 After its emergence in China in December 2019, the disease quickly spread around the whole worl
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