Old Ideology, Novel Virus – How Freedom Affects the Fight against COVID-19

Due to lingering old socialist pro-state ideology, people in former East German districts are more likely to follow government virus-fighting policies that are intrusive to personal freedom than those in former West German districts, alleviating the virus situation in former East German districts. A spatial discontinuity design shows that COVID-19 is less severe in former East German districts. A difference-in-differences analysis further demonstrates that virus-fighting policies are more effective in mitigating the virus situation in former East German districts. Therefore, freedom appears to lead to a more severe COVID-19 situation. Expanding validity in an international setting and using an instrumental variable approach to establish causality, we show that three measures of freedom, democracy, individualism and economic affluence, are positively associated with the severity of COVID-19. We conclude that, in the presence of an unprecedented pandemic, freedom limits executive powers and imposes a negative health externality on the general public.