American Economic Journal:
Applied Economics
ISSN 1945-7782 (Print) | ISSN 1945-7790 (Online)
Civil Liberties in Times of Crisis
American Economic Journal: Applied Economics
vol. 15,
no. 4, October 2023
(pp. 389–421)
Abstract
We study people's willingness to trade off civil liberties for increased health security in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic by deploying representative surveys involving around 550,000 responses across 15 countries. We document significant heterogeneity across groups in willingness to sacrifice rights: citizens disadvantaged by income, education, or race are less willing to sacrifice rights than their more advantaged peers in every country. Leveraging naturally occurring variation and experimental approaches, we estimate a one standard deviation increase in health insecurity increases willingness to sacrifice civil liberties by 68–83 percent of the difference between the average Chinese and US citizen.Citation
Alsan, Marcella, Luca Braghieri, Sarah Eichmeyer, Minjeong Joyce Kim, Stefanie Stantcheva, and David Y. Yang. 2023. "Civil Liberties in Times of Crisis." American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 15 (4): 389–421. DOI: 10.1257/app.20210736Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- D12 Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
- D91 Micro-Based Behavioral Economics: Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
- I12 Health Behavior
- I18 Health: Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
- K38 Human Rights Law; Gender Law; Animal Rights Law
- O17 Formal and Informal Sectors; Shadow Economy; Institutional Arrangements
- P36 Socialist Institutions and Their Transitions: Consumer Economics; Health; Education and Training: Welfare, Income, Wealth, and Poverty
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