Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP15900
Authors: Antonio Moreno Ibez; Steven Ongena; Alexia Ventula Veghazy; Alexander F. Wagner
Abstract: Do financial crises affect long-term public health? To answer this question, we examined the relationship between the 2007-2009 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and the 2020-2022 COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, we examined the relationship between the financial losses derived from the GFC, and the health outcomes associated with the first wave of the pandemic. European countries that were more affected by the financial crisis had more deaths relative to coronavirus cases. An analogous relationship emerged across Spanish provinces and US states. Part of the transmission from finances to health outcomes appears to have occurred through cross-sectional differences in health care facilities.
Keywords: Global Financial Crisis; COVID-19; Local Sovereign Debt; Death Ratio; Curative Beds
JEL Codes: I10; G21; H1
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Global Financial Crisis (GFC) (F65) | health outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic (I14) |
| Financial losses from the GFC (F65) | health outcomes associated with the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic (I14) |
| severity of the financial crisis (G01) | COVID-19 mortality (I12) |
| deterioration of public health spending due to the GFC (H51) | COVID-19 mortality (I12) |
| Financial crisis severity (G01) | COVID-19 mortality (I12) |