The impact of 2020 French municipal elections on the spread of COVID-19.

Soon after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the French government decided to still hold the first round of the 2020 municipal elections as scheduled on March 15. What was the impact of these elections on the spread of COVID-19 in France? Answering this question leads to intricate econometric issues as omitted variables may drive both epidemiological dynamics and electoral turnout, and as a national lockdown was imposed at almost the same time as the elections. In order to disentangle the effect of the elections from that of confounding factors, we first predict each department's epidemiological dynamics using information up to the election.

Political regime and COVID 19 death rate: Efficient, biasing or simply different autocracies?An econometric analysis.

The difference in COVID 19 death rates across political regimes has caught a lot of attention. The "" view suggests that autocracies may be more efficient at putting in place policies that contain COVID 19 spread. On the other hand, the "" view underlines that autocracies may be under reporting their COVID 19 data.