Assessing COVID-19 policy responses relationships with the economy and human health: a global assessment

The COVID-19 pandemic had severe consequences on human health and economic activity worldwide. Different policy responses have been implemented to tackle them. Among COVID-19 policy responses adopted to contain and reduce health and economic effects, it is possible to distinguish three categories: containment, economic and health policies. The goal of the paper is to assess how COVID-19 policy responses may be associated to human health and economic effects by looking at 196 countries from 2020 to 2021. Applying a panel fixed effects regression analysis, we show that stringent containment policies alone do not have an evident relationship with human health and that worldwide vaccination availability is the most effective in reducing COVID-19’s negative repercussions on health and national economic performance. Results suggest that containment policies have a short-term negative relationship with economic activities, while government income support can play a key role in mitigating immediate economic losses. Moreover, COVID-19 fiscal stimuli may be a complementary powerful tool aimed at reducing negative side-relationships between the COVID-19 crisis and the economy.