| dc.description.abstract | The Covid-19 pandemic was declared on 11 March 2020 by the World Health
Organization. Previous studies on viral diseases have suggested that the
socioeconomic factors of countries can provide an explanation for which countries
are more susceptible to Covid-19 infection cases. Our objective in this study was
to determine whether this is the case, and whether the factors of importance
change during different stages of the first year of the pandemic. We believed
investigating this would provide important information to policymakers as
containment measures should be implemented when a country is susceptible to
more cases. We investigated this using a two-step procedure, where the first step
was a panel data analysis of the number of cases and the second step was a crosscountry
analysis of the socioeconomic factors. We find that socioeconomic factors
can explain a country’s susceptibility to a higher number of infections, and these
factors do in fact differ during the various periods of the pandemic. Our key
results are that countries with developed economies are more susceptible in the
early stage of the pandemic, while countries with more inequality become
susceptible after the former countries have gained control of the virus. We
conclude that policymakers should, when facing a pandemic of a virus transmitted
in a similar way to Covid-19, consider the characteristics of their country and time
their policy implementation accordingly. | en_US |
