Pandemics and Protectionism: Evidence from the “Spanish” flu

Nina Boberg-Fazlic, Markus Lampe, Maja Uhre Pedersen and Paul Sharp
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Maja Uhre Pedersen: University of Southern Denmark

CAGE Online Working Paper Series from Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE)

Abstract: The impact of COVID-19 on recent tendencies towards international isolationism has been much speculated on but remains to be seen. We suggest that valuable evidence can be gleaned from the “Spanish” flu of 1918-20. It is well-known that the world fell into a protectionist spiral following the First World War, but scholars have almost exclusively ignored the impact of the pandemic. We employ a difference-in-differences strategy on data for Europe and find that excess deaths had a significant impact on trade policy, independent of the war. A one standard deviation increase in excess deaths during the outbreak implied 0.022 percentage points higher tariffs subsequently, corresponding to an increase of one third of a standard deviation in tariffs. Health policy should aim to avoid the experience of the interwar period and consider the international macroeconomic impact of measures (not) taken.

Keywords: Pandemics; protectionism; trade JEL Classification: F13; I19; N74 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-his and nep-int
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https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/c ... tions/wp479.2020.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: Pandemics and protectionism: evidence from the “Spanish” flu (2021)
Working Paper: Pandemics and protectionism: evidence from the "Spanish" flu (2020)
Working Paper: Pandemics and protectionism: evidence from the "Spanish" flu (2020)
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