Health politics? Determinants of US states’ reactions to COVID-19

Abstract

Were policy responses of the US states to the pandemic driven by partisan politics or by budgetary reasons? We show that balanced-budget rules also had an impact, mediated by the possibility of benefiting from the funds previously stored in budget stabilisation funds. State policymakers tried to square the circle by simultaneously respecting budget rules, limiting the economic impact of the social distancing measures, combating the pandemic and pandering to their political bases. Some fiscal rules have induced a trade-off between health and public finance, which may reignite the debate on the pro-cyclicality of fiscal rules.

Political regimes and deaths in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Recent research has shown that political factors have influenced policy responses and the public's adherence to COVID-19 regulations within the US (Adolph et al, 2020;Baccini and Brodeur, 2020;Farvaque et al, 2020) and in a cross-country context (Cheibub et al, 2020;Cronert, 2020;Sebhatu et al, 2020;Cepaluni et al, 2021c;Löblová et al, 2021). COVID-19 raised the question of an authoritarian advantage in disease response (Kavanagh and Singh, 2020), as non-democratic countries with more collectivist cultures solve coordination problems relatively easily (Gorodnichenko and Roland, 2021).…”