Age-Related Political Bias in COVID Policy Responses

This paper explores the impact of political elections proximity on the policy responses during COVID pandemic, based on the daily data from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker. The days of elections are preceded by stricter measures related to school closures in the countries characterized by a larger share of elderly residents. At the same time, the other restrictive measures, such as work closures or internal movement restrictions, are lessened or unchanged before the elections. These results hold for daily and weekly-averaged data, controlling for country and time fixed effects.