Governance and the New Corona Virus (COVID-19) Outbreak in the World: Empirical Evidence

Aims: This paper aims to analyze the effect of public governance on the spread and mortality of the new corona virus. It focuses on the effects of differences observed in government’s responsiveness on the spread and mortality of this pandemic around the world.

Sample: Our study is based on a sample of 129 countries from December, 8th 2019 to May 5th, 2020.

Methods: The Ordinary Least Squares method is applied to cross-sectional data. We also proceed by descriptive statistics and scatter analyses to access the effect of public governance on the spread and the mortality of the Covid-19.

Results: The results obtained show that government response time favors the speed of spread, level of infection, and mortality related to the Covid-19. The results indicate that countries in which governments have reacted early have lower levels of contamination and deaths than those that reacted late. Finally, our results suggest that the stringency of early government measures is a capital factor explaining the spread and mortality of this virus. Our results are robust to regional specificities, which distinguish relatively more resilient developing countries from developed countries with higher levels of contagion and mortality. Then, we recommend for all categories of countries a greater speed and rigour in government responsiveness in the management of pandemic diseases.