Geloso Vincent, Hyde Kelly, Murtazashvili Ilia
George Mason University, Fairfax, VA USA.
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, USA.
Eur J Law Econ. 2022;54(1):37-61. doi: 10.1007/s10657-021-09704-7. Epub 2021 Jul 19.
We argue that institutions are bundles that involve trade-offs in the government's ability to provide public goods that affect public health. We hypothesize that the institutions underlying economic freedom affect the mix of diseases by reducing diseases of poverty relative to diseases of commerce (those associated with free movement of people, such as smallpox or COVID-19). We focus on smallpox and typhoid fever in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century in order to build on recent work that make arguments similar to ours, especially the framework Werner Troesken sets forth in . Our evidence shows that economic freedom, in multiple periods of time and settings prior to the eradication of smallpox in the second half of the twentieth century, reduced typhoid mortality but had no effect on smallpox deaths. The implication for COVID-19 is that the trade-off between fighting the pandemic and preserving economic freedom may not be too severe in the short run. However, in the long run, the wealth benefits from economic freedom are likely to be crucial in reducing vulnerability to diseases of commerce primarily from their impact on comorbidities (such as diabetes and heart disease). Thus, economic freedom is on balance good for public health, which suggests that it, while requiring trade-offs, might be the best institutional bundle for dealing with pandemics.
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10657-021-09704-7.
我们认为，制度是一系列的组合，涉及到政府在提供影响公众健康的公共物品方面的权衡。我们假设，经济自由背后的制度通过减少贫困疾病相对于商业疾病（那些与人员自由流动相关的疾病，如天花或新冠病毒）来影响疾病的组合。我们聚焦于19世纪末和20世纪初的天花和伤寒热，以便在近期与我们观点相似的研究基础上进行拓展，尤其是维尔纳·特罗斯肯所提出的框架。我们的证据表明，在20世纪下半叶天花被根除之前的多个时间段和背景下，经济自由降低了伤寒死亡率，但对天花死亡没有影响。对于新冠病毒而言，这意味着在短期内，抗击疫情与维护经济自由之间的权衡可能并不太严重。然而，从长远来看，经济自由带来的财富收益可能对于降低对商业疾病的易感性至关重要，主要是因为它们对合并症（如糖尿病和心脏病）的影响。因此，总体而言经济自由对公众健康有益，这表明它虽然需要权衡，但可能是应对疫情的最佳制度组合。
在线版本包含可在10.1007/s10657-021-09704-7获取的补充材料。
