IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tor/tecipa/tecipa-663.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Political polarization, social fragmentation, and cooperation during a pandemic

Author

Listed:
  • Kirsten Cornelson
  • Boriana Miloucheva

Abstract

We study the impact of political polarization on the willingness of people to comply with social distancing directives during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find a reduced compliance with these measures when the state governor differs from the preferred party of survey respondents. Exploring a number of possible mechanisms, we show that these results are strongest in states where the opposing party's advocates are more hostile and provide evidence that compliance is low when recommendations come from an out-group member. This paper, more broadly, demonstrates the consequences of political polarization on the willingness to contribute to public goods.

Suggested Citation

  • Kirsten Cornelson & Boriana Miloucheva, 2020. "Political polarization, social fragmentation, and cooperation during a pandemic," Working Papers tecipa-663, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:tor:tecipa:tecipa-663
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.economics.utoronto.ca/public/workingPapers/tecipa-663.pdf
    File Function: Main Text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jérôme Adda, 2016. "Economic Activity and the Spread of Viral Diseases: Evidence from High Frequency Data," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 131(2), pages 891-941.
    2. Yann Algan & Camille Hémet & David D. Laitin, 2016. "The Social Effects of Ethnic Diversity at the Local Level: A Natural Experiment with Exogenous Residential Allocation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 124(3), pages 696-733.
    3. Sebastian Calonico & Matias D. Cattaneo & Rocio Titiunik, 2014. "Robust Nonparametric Confidence Intervals for Regression‐Discontinuity Designs," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 82, pages 2295-2326, November.
    4. Fang, Hanming & Wang, Long & Yang, Yang, 2020. "Human mobility restrictions and the spread of the Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in China," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    5. John M. Barrios & Yael Hochberg, 2020. "Risk Perception Through the Lens of Politics in the Time of the COVID-19 Pandemic," NBER Working Papers 27008, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Andrew C. Eggers & Anthony Fowler & Jens Hainmueller & Andrew B. Hall & James M. Snyder, 2015. "On the Validity of the Regression Discontinuity Design for Estimating Electoral Effects: New Evidence from Over 40,000 Close Races," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 59(1), pages 259-274, January.
    7. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/4rm8ji0nae9elbggr366la3786 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Alberto Alesina & Reza Baqir & William Easterly, 1999. "Public Goods and Ethnic Divisions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(4), pages 1243-1284.
    9. Lee, David S., 2008. "Randomized experiments from non-random selection in U.S. House elections," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 675-697, February.
    10. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/6lcb7ovms687vbos73r9r0is5g is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Ricardo Perez-Truglia, 2018. "Political Conformity: Event-Study Evidence from the United States," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 100(1), pages 14-28, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    RePEc Biblio mentions

    As found on the RePEc Biblio, the curated bibliography for Economics:
    1. > Economics of Welfare > Health Economics > Economics of Pandemics > Specific pandemics > Covid-19 > Politics

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Milosh, Maria & Painter, Marcus & Sonin, Konstantin & Van Dijcke, David & Wright, Austin L., 2021. "Unmasking partisanship: Polarization undermines public response to collective risk," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 204(C).
    2. Adam Brzezinski & Valentin Kecht & David Dijcke & Austin L. Wright, 2021. "Science skepticism reduced compliance with COVID-19 shelter-in-place policies in the United States," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 5(11), pages 1519-1527, November.
    3. Sergei Guriev & Elias Papaioannou, 2022. "The Political Economy of Populism," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 60(3), pages 753-832, September.
    4. Damon C. Roberts & Stephen M. Utych, 2021. "Polarized social distancing: Residents of Republican‐majority counties spend more time away from home during the COVID‐19 crisis," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 102(6), pages 2516-2527, November.
    5. Chen, Zhuo & Li, Pengfei & Liao, Li & Liu, Lu & Wang, Zhengwei, 2024. "Assessing and addressing the coronavirus-induced economic crisis: Evidence from 1.5 billion sales invoices," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    6. Aassve,Arnstein & Capezzone,Tommaso & Cavalli,Nicolo’ & Conzo,Pierluigi & Peng,Chen, 2022. "Trust in the time of coronavirus: longitudinal evidence from the United States," Department of Economics and Statistics Cognetti de Martiis. Working Papers 202203, University of Turin.
    7. Luis Á. Hierro & David Patiño & Pedro Atienza & Antonio J. Garzón & David Cantarero, 2023. "The effect of altruism on COVID-19 vaccination rates," Health Economics Review, Springer, vol. 13(1), pages 1-12, December.
    8. Allcott, Hunt & Boxell, Levi & Conway, Jacob & Gentzkow, Matthew & Thaler, Michael & Yang, David, 2020. "Polarization and public health: Partisan differences in social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    9. Acolin, Jessica & Fishman, Paul, 2023. "Beyond the biomedical, towards the agentic: A paradigm shift for population health science," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 326(C).
    10. Adam Brzezinski & Valentin Kecht & David Van Dijcke & Austin L. Wright, 2020. "Belief in Science Influences Physical Distancing in Response to COVID-19 Lockdown Policies," Working Papers 2020-56, Becker Friedman Institute for Research In Economics.

    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. Kirsten Cornelson & Boriana Miloucheva, 2022. "Political polarization and cooperation during a pandemic," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(9), pages 2025-2049, September.
    2. Benoît SCHMUTZ & Grégory VERDUGO, 2020. "Do Politicians Shape the Electorate ? Evidence from French Municipalities," Working Papers 2020-18, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics, revised 01 Apr 2021.
    3. Thushyanthan Baskaran & Sonia Bhalotra & Brian Min & Yogesh Uppal, 2024. "Women legislators and economic performance," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 29(2), pages 151-214, June.
    4. Adam C. Sales & Ben B. Hansen, 2020. "Limitless Regression Discontinuity," Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, , vol. 45(2), pages 143-174, April.
    5. Jung Sakong, 2021. "Identifying Taste-Based Discrimination: Effect of Black Electoral Victories on Racial Prejudice and Economic Gaps," Working Paper Series WP-2021-07, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    6. Fernando Aragón & Ricardo Pique, 2020. "Better the devil you know? Reelected politicians and policy outcomes under no term limits," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 182(1), pages 1-16, January.
    7. Luca Bellodi & Massimo Morelli & Matia Vannoni, 2021. "A Costly Commitment: Populism, Government Performance, and the Quality of Bureaucracy," CESifo Working Paper Series 9470, CESifo.
    8. Leopoldo Fergusson & Pablo Querubin & Nelson A. Ruiz & Juan F. Vargas, 2021. "The Real Winner's Curse," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 65(1), pages 52-68, January.
    9. Leandro De Magalhaes & Isabel Spirgel-Sinclair, 2021. "Could Regression Discontinuity estimates of incumbency e ects help monitor parliamentary elections? Evidence from Malawi," Bristol Economics Discussion Papers 21/741, School of Economics, University of Bristol, UK.
    10. Egorov, Georgy & Enikolopov, Ruben & Makarin, Alexey & Petrova, Maria, 2021. "Divided we stay home: Social distancing and ethnic diversity," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 194(C).
    11. Quoc-Anh Do & Yen-Teik Lee & Bang Dang Nguyen, 2016. "Directors as Connectors: The Impact of the External Networks of Directors on Firms," Working Papers hal-03393196, HAL.
    12. Repetto, Luca & Andrés, Maximiliano Sosa, 2023. "Divided government, polarization, and policy: Regression-discontinuity evidence from US states," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    13. Jain, Chandan & Kashyap, Shagun & Lahoti, Rahul & Sahoo, Soham, 2022. "Do Educated Leaders Affect Economic Development? Evidence from India," IZA Discussion Papers 15278, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. Keita, Sekou & Mandon, Pierre, 2018. "Give a fish or teach fishing? Partisan affiliation of U.S. governors and the poverty status of immigrants," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 65-96.
    15. Sonia Bhalotra & Irma Clots-Figueras & Lakshmi Iyer, "undated". "Pathbreakers? Women’s Electoral Success and Future Political Participation," Boston University - Department of Economics - The Institute for Economic Development Working Papers Series dp-277, Boston University - Department of Economics.
    16. Schmutz, Benoît & Verdugo, Gregory, 2023. "Do elections affect immigration? Evidence from French municipalities," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 218(C).
    17. Jain, Chandan & Kashyap, Shagun & Lahoti, Rahul & Sahoo, Soham, 2023. "The impact of educated leaders on economic development: Evidence from India," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(3), pages 1068-1093.
    18. Quoc-Anh Do & Yen-Teik Lee & Bang Dang Nguyen, 2016. "Directors as Connectors: The Impact of the External Networks of Directors on Firms," Post-Print hal-03393196, HAL.
    19. Luca Bellodi & Massimo Morelli & Matia Vannoni, 2021. "The Costs of Populism for the Bureaucracy and Government Performance: Evidence from Italian Municipalities," BAFFI CAREFIN Working Papers 21158, BAFFI CAREFIN, Centre for Applied Research on International Markets Banking Finance and Regulation, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.
    20. Gary Cornwall & Beau Sauley, 2021. "Indirect effects and causal inference: reconsidering regression discontinuity," Journal of Spatial Econometrics, Springer, vol. 2(1), pages 1-28, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Polarization; health;

    JEL classification:

    • I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health
    • P16 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Capitalist Institutions; Welfare State
    • Z1 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics

    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:tor:tecipa:tecipa-663. 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: RePEc Maintainer (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.