IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/29498.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

International Evidence on Vaccines and the Mortality to Infections Ratio in the Pre-Omicron Era

Author

Listed:
  • Joshua Aizenman
  • Alex Cukierman
  • Yothin Jinjarak
  • Weining Xin

Abstract

Prior to the appearance of the Omicron variant, observations on countries like the UK that have accumulated a large fraction of inoculated individuals suggest that, although initially, vaccines have little effect on new infections, they strongly reduce the share of mortality out of a given pool of infections. This paper examines the extent to which this phenomenon is more general by testing the hypothesis that the ratio of lagged mortality to current infections is decreasing in the total number of vaccines per one hundred individuals in the pre-Omicron period, in a pooled time-series, cross-section sample with weekly observations for up to 208 countries. The main finding is that vaccines moderate the share of mortality from a given pool of lagged infections at sufficiently high levels of vaccination rates, which is essentially a favorable shift in the tradeoff between life preservation and economic performance. The practical lesson is that, in the presence of a sufficiently high share of inoculated individuals, governments can shade down containment measures, even as infections are still rampant, without significant adverse effects on mortality.

Suggested Citation

  • Joshua Aizenman & Alex Cukierman & Yothin Jinjarak & Weining Xin, 2021. "International Evidence on Vaccines and the Mortality to Infections Ratio in the Pre-Omicron Era," NBER Working Papers 29498, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:29498
    Note: EH IFM
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w29498.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Karabulut, Gokhan & Zimmermann, Klaus F. & Bilgin, Mehmet Huseyin & Doker, Asli Cansin, 2021. "Democracy and COVID-19 outcomes," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 203(C).
    2. Balázs Égert & Yvan Guillemette & Murtin Fabrice & David Turner, 2021. "Walking the Tightrope: Avoiding a Lockdown While Containing the Virus," CESifo Forum, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 22(03), pages 34-40, May.
    3. Yothin Jinjarak & Rashad Ahmed & Sameer Nair-Desai & Weining Xin & Joshua Aizenman, 2020. "Accounting for Global COVID-19 Diffusion Patterns, January–April 2020," Economics of Disasters and Climate Change, Springer, vol. 4(3), pages 515-559, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bonfiglio, Andrea & Coderoni, Silvia & Esposti, Roberto, 2022. "Policy responses to COVID-19 pandemic waves: Cross-region and cross-sector economic impact," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 252-279.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mauro Caselli & Andrea Fracasso & Sergio Scicchitano, 2022. "From the lockdown to the new normal: individual mobility and local labor market characteristics following the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 35(4), pages 1517-1550, October.
    2. Checo Ariadne & Grigoli Francesco & Mota Jose M., 2022. "Assessing Targeted Containment Policies to Fight COVID-19," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 22(1), pages 159-196, January.
    3. Abel Brodeur & David Gray & Anik Islam & Suraiya Bhuiyan, 2021. "A literature review of the economics of COVID‐19," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(4), pages 1007-1044, September.
    4. Hong, Sunmin & Jeong, Dohyo & Kim, Pyung, 2024. "Have offender demographics changed since the COVID-19 pandemic? Evidence from money mules in South Korea," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    5. Toan Luu Duc Huynh & Duy Duong, 2022. "Government responses, democracy, and COVID-19 containment: a cross-country study," Economics and Business Letters, Oviedo University Press, vol. 11(3), pages 98-106.
    6. NARITA Yusuke & SUDO Ayumi, 2021. "Curse of Democracy: Evidence from 2020," Discussion papers 21034, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    7. Cooray, Arusha & Jha, Chandan Kumar & Sarangi, Sudipta, 2024. "Good governance in troubled times: What we know and what experts say," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 136(C).
    8. Sumedha Gupta & Kosali I. Simon & Coady Wing, 2020. "Mandated and Voluntary Social Distancing During The COVID-19 Epidemic: A Review," NBER Working Papers 28139, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Anna Adamecz-Völgyi & Ágnes Szabó-Morvai, 2021. "Confidence in public institutions is critical in containing the COVID-19 pandemic," CERS-IE WORKING PAPERS 2126, Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies.
    10. Karabulut, Gokhan & Zimmermann, Klaus F. & Bilgin, Mehmet Huseyin & Doker, Asli Cansin, 2021. "Democracy and COVID-19 outcomes," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 203(C).
    11. Étienne Dagorn & Martina Dattilo & Matthieu Pourieux, 2022. "Preferences matter! Political Responses to the COVID-19 and Population’s Preferences," Economics Working Paper Archive (University of Rennes & University of Caen) 2022-01, Center for Research in Economics and Management (CREM), University of Rennes, University of Caen and CNRS.
    12. Naudé, Wim, 2020. "Entrepreneurial Recovery from COVID-19: Decentralization, Democratization, Demand, Distribution, and Demography," IZA Discussion Papers 13436, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Yusuke Narita & Ayumi Sudo, 2021. "Curse of Democracy: Evidence from the 21st Century," Papers 2104.07617, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2021.
    14. Ainaa, Carmen & Brunetti, Irene & Mussida, Chiara & Scicchitano, Sergio, 2021. "Who lost the most? Distributive effects of COVID-19 pandemic," GLO Discussion Paper Series 829, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    15. Costas Siriopoulos & Sophia A. Kassapi, 2023. "Female Labor Participation and Mother’s Daycare in Greece Pre- and Post-COVID-19 Pandemic: A Regional Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(14), pages 1-20, July.
    16. Michael Bayerlein & Vanessa A. Boese & Scott Gates & Katrin Kamin & Syed Mansoob Murshed, 2021. "Populism and COVID-19: How Populist Governments (Mis)Handle the Pandemic," Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy, now publishers, vol. 2(3), pages 389-428, December.
    17. Mikel Erkoreka & Josu Hernando‐Pérez, 2023. "Decentralization: A handicap in fighting the COVID‐19 pandemic? The response of the regional governments in Spain," Public Administration & Development, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43(2), pages 129-140, May.
    18. Carmen Aina & Irene Brunetti & Chiara Mussida & Sergio Scicchitano, 2023. "Distributional effects of COVID-19," Eurasian Business Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 13(1), pages 221-256, March.
    19. Erick Rangel Gonzalez & Irving Llamosas-Rosas & Felipe J. Fonseca, 2021. "Aislamiento social y el COVID-19 en las regiones de Mexico," EconoQuantum, Revista de Economia y Finanzas, Universidad de Guadalajara, Centro Universitario de Ciencias Economico Administrativas, Departamento de Metodos Cuantitativos y Maestria en Economia., vol. 18(2), pages 1-22, Julio-Dic.
    20. Daehler, Timo B. & Aizenman, Joshua & Jinjarak, Yothin, 2021. "Emerging markets sovereign CDS spreads during COVID-19: Economics versus epidemiology news," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 100(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • F42 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance - - - International Policy Coordination and Transmission
    • F44 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance - - - International Business Cycles
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:29498. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.