Voting, contagion and the trade-off between public health and political rights: Quasi-experimental evidence from the Italian 2020 polls

Marco Mello; Giuseppe Moscelli

doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2022.07.008

Voting, contagion and the trade-off between public health and political rights: Quasi-experimental evidence from the Italian 2020 polls

Marco Mello^* (Corresponding Author), Giuseppe Moscelli^* (Corresponding Author)

^*Corresponding author for this work

Economics

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

Natural disasters raise challenging trade-offs between public health safety and inalienable rights like the active involvement in political choices through voting. We exploit a quasi-experimental setting provided by multiple ballots across regions and municipalities during the Italian 2020 elections to estimate the effect of voters’ turnout on the spread of COVID-19. By employing an event-study design with a two-stage Control Function strategy, we find that post-poll new COVID infections increased by an average of 1.1% for each additional percentage point of turnout. Based on these estimates and real political events, we also show through a simulation that in-person voting during a high-infection regime may have a large impact on public health outcomes, more than doubling new infections, deaths and hospitalizations. These findings suggest that policy-makers’ responses to natural disasters should be flexible and contingent to the emergency severity, in order to minimize social costs for citizens.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	1025-1052
Number of pages	28
Journal	Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
Volume	200
Early online date	19 Jul 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2022.07.008
Publication status	Published - Aug 2022
Event	42nd Annual AHES Conference - Virtual event Duration: 21 Sept 2021 → 22 Sept 2021 https://ahes.org.au/event/42nd-annual-ahes-conference/

Bibliographical note

The authors are thankful for useful comments and suggestions to the Editor, two anonymous reviewers, Jo Blanden, Laura Blow, Valentina Corradi, Esteban Jaimovich, Francesco Moscone, Vincent O’Sullivan, Giacomo Pasini, Luigi Pistaferri, Leonid Polishchuk, Luigi Siciliani, Maurizio Zanardi, Francesca Zantomio and participants to seminars at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (April 2021), HSE University (November 2021), EuHEA 2021 PhD Conference, Australian Health Economics Society 2021 Conference, 24th AIES Conference (Milan, December 2021).

The authors acknowledge funding from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences under the Newsworthy Fund scheme.

We are also thankful to Istituto Superiore di Sanita’ (ISS) for providing us with municipality level COVID data for this work, coming from the “ISS COVID-19 Integrated Surveillance” national data repository; the findings and opinions expressed in this study do not represent any views from ISS staff. The usual disclaimer applies.

Keywords

Voting
COVID-19
Public health
Civic capital
Event study
Endogeneity
Control function

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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Mello_JEBO_Voting_Contagion_And_VoR
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Voting, contagion and the trade-off between public health and political rights: Quasi-experimental evidence from the Italian 2020 polls. / Mello, Marco (Corresponding Author); Moscelli, Giuseppe (Corresponding Author).
In: Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Vol. 200, 08.2022, p. 1025-1052.

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

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abstract = "Natural disasters raise challenging trade-offs between public health safety and inalienable rights like the active involvement in political choices through voting. We exploit a quasi-experimental setting provided by multiple ballots across regions and municipalities during the Italian 2020 elections to estimate the effect of voters{\textquoteright} turnout on the spread of COVID-19. By employing an event-study design with a two-stage Control Function strategy, we find that post-poll new COVID infections increased by an average of 1.1% for each additional percentage point of turnout. Based on these estimates and real political events, we also show through a simulation that in-person voting during a high-infection regime may have a large impact on public health outcomes, more than doubling new infections, deaths and hospitalizations. These findings suggest that policy-makers{\textquoteright} responses to natural disasters should be flexible and contingent to the emergency severity, in order to minimize social costs for citizens.",

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author = "Marco Mello and Giuseppe Moscelli",

note = "The authors are thankful for useful comments and suggestions to the Editor, two anonymous reviewers, Jo Blanden, Laura Blow, Valentina Corradi, Esteban Jaimovich, Francesco Moscone, Vincent O{\textquoteright}Sullivan, Giacomo Pasini, Luigi Pistaferri, Leonid Polishchuk, Luigi Siciliani, Maurizio Zanardi, Francesca Zantomio and participants to seminars at Ca{\textquoteright} Foscari University of Venice (April 2021), HSE University (November 2021), EuHEA 2021 PhD Conference, Australian Health Economics Society 2021 Conference, 24th AIES Conference (Milan, December 2021). The authors acknowledge funding from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences under the Newsworthy Fund scheme. We are also thankful to Istituto Superiore di Sanita{\textquoteright} (ISS) for providing us with municipality level COVID data for this work, coming from the “ISS COVID-19 Integrated Surveillance” national data repository; the findings and opinions expressed in this study do not represent any views from ISS staff. The usual disclaimer applies.; 42nd Annual AHES Conference ; Conference date: 21-09-2021 Through 22-09-2021",

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AB - Natural disasters raise challenging trade-offs between public health safety and inalienable rights like the active involvement in political choices through voting. We exploit a quasi-experimental setting provided by multiple ballots across regions and municipalities during the Italian 2020 elections to estimate the effect of voters’ turnout on the spread of COVID-19. By employing an event-study design with a two-stage Control Function strategy, we find that post-poll new COVID infections increased by an average of 1.1% for each additional percentage point of turnout. Based on these estimates and real political events, we also show through a simulation that in-person voting during a high-infection regime may have a large impact on public health outcomes, more than doubling new infections, deaths and hospitalizations. These findings suggest that policy-makers’ responses to natural disasters should be flexible and contingent to the emergency severity, in order to minimize social costs for citizens.

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ER -

Voting, contagion and the trade-off between public health and political rights: Quasi-experimental evidence from the Italian 2020 polls

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

UN SDGs

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Cite this