Do corrupt emerging markets respond to COVID-19 differently?

TL;DR: Yes — corrupt emerging markets respond to COVID-19 more intensely.

This past semester, I took an economics course about emerging markets.¹ Our final project was researching and presenting any topic of our choosing so long as it related to emerging markets. My team decided to investigate the relationship between corruption and COVID-19 in emerging markets.

Whenever you read “emerging markets,” we are referring to economies that the IMF considers to be emerging markets.

Longer TL;DR:

1. Corrupt emerging markets generally tend to be more autocratic, and autocratic countries consequently clamped down on COVID-19 more severely.
2. This more extreme initial response was comparatively less effective.
3. In fact, corruption is correlated with a faster infection rate.
4. A potentially useful future model that reconciles corruption and autocracy could be \(R = \beta te^{-\lambda t}\), where \(R\) is the severity of COVID-19 response, \(\beta\) is level of autocracy, \(\lambda\) is level of corruption, and \(t\) is days since first case.

Let me see the slides.²