Evaluating the Effect of Governance Components on Stringency Policy to Mitigate the Spread of Covid-19: A Multivariate Robust Regression Method

The COVID-19 pandemic, as one of the greatest socio-economic shocks of recent years in the world, has had a very significant impact on the all around the world. To mitigate the effects of this shock, governments sought to counter the pandemic with restrictive policies. But the executive power of governments to implement restrictive policies has varied. The main question of the research is whether the characteristics of good governance can affect the way that governments respond to the COVID-19. To answer this question, data from 145 countries and the Robust Regression Method have been used. The results of the study show that good governance indicators have a significant effect on the ability of governments to enforce stringency policy, so that among high-income countries, the components of good governance indicators have increased the ability of governments to enforce strict regulations. The results of the regression models suggest that the elasticity of the effect of these components on the stringency policy among high-income governments, respectively, are around political stability 0.653, government efficiency and effectiveness 0.655, quality of laws and regulations 0.485, rule of law 0.6, and corruption control 0.608. These components for the group of countries in the world in terms of elasticity of efficiency and effectiveness of government indicators were 0.312, quality of laws and regulations 0.275, corruption control 0.229 and had a positive impact on the performance of governments in pandemic governance.