How do governments perform in facing COVID-19?

Abstract

The issue of coronavirus outbreak in the world, though new, is equally pervasive. It has posed a new and ambiguous challenge to the economic growth of countries around the world. Undoubtedly, the efforts of countries to curb the spread of this virus and reduce the number of deaths are necessary for other strategies that will be taken in other areas, especially in the economic field. Comparing countries only based one the statistics on virus spread and mortality without considering the contextual variables, can be misleading. Thus using dynamic data envelopment analysis, this study calculated the performance of 19 selected countries in two dimensions: inefficiency of preventing coronavirus spread and inefficiency of preventing deaths caused by coronavirus from February 2 to April 12. According to the study, the inefficiency trend of preventing coronavirus spread in Singapore, South Korea, China and Australia are decreasing during the period under review and the inefficiency trend of other countries, which of course differ in terms of inefficiency, are increasing with different slopes. Also, Australia, Finland, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand have experienced less inefficiency in preventing deaths caused by coronavirus compared to other countries. Stringency index and global health security (GHS) index have been used as well, to analyze the findings and at the end some suggestions have been presented.