Premium
The COVID‐19 crisis: A public choice view
Author(s) -
Zweifel Peter
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
economic affairs
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.24
H-Index - 18
eISSN - 1468-0270
pISSN - 0265-0665
DOI - 10.1111/ecaf.12431
Subject(s) - covid-19 , government (linguistics) , pandemic , control (management) , political science , public administration , public health , crisis response , political economy , law and economics , economics , public relations , virology , management , medicine , linguistics , philosophy , nursing , disease , pathology , outbreak , infectious disease (medical specialty)
Many observers have been puzzled by the sight of otherwise freedom‐loving citizens consenting to the stripping of their civil rights and the massive budgetary expansion of their governments in response to the COVID‐19 pandemic. Conversely, governments who ‘kept their cool’ such as those of Brazil and Sweden were heavily criticised by the Western media. Adopting James Buchanan's contractarian approach, this article seeks to model how the interplay between citizens and their government is affected by a health crisis. Citizens' increased willingness to pay for improved control of risks is found to play a major role.