Trust as a Resource for Fighting Coronavirus (with the Italian and Swedish Cases)

High level of interpersonal and institutional trust facilitates interactions between people, reduces transaction costs, and stimulates economic activity. Trust becomes especially important during crises when people are required to act together and to follow recommendations. The coronavirus pandemic has once again made this clear. Using data from Eurofund, we expose the relationship between various components of trust (public authorities, healthcare systems, science, etc.) and behavior of the Europeans during the COVID-19 pandemic (willingness to comply with quarantine requirements and get vaccinated). Intention to get vaccinated is most closely related to trust in science and in the healthcare system, while the willingness to comply with sanitary regime is most closely related to trust in government. Readiness to comply with epidemiological rules and willingness to get vaccinated vary greatly between countries. In the countries with higher institutional and interpersonal trust people express greater willingness to follow epidemiological recommendations announced by authorities. We selected two clusters from our sample (with lower and higher levels of trust) and chose Italy and Sweden as representatives of these clusters to illustrate differential responses to sanitary restrictions imposed by government agencies. In Italy's case, ambiguous attitude, and in Sweden's case, almost complete acceptance resulted in different levels of COVID-19 mortality. At the same time, both countries have achieved relatively high vaccination rates, which reflects reliance on science and reliability of national health systems.

Trust as a Resource for Fighting Coronavirus (with the Italian and Swedish Сases)

High level of interpersonal and institutional trust facilitates interactions between people, reduces transaction costs, and stimulates economic activity. Trust be-comes especially important during crises when people are required to act together and to follow recommendations. The coronavirus pandemic has once again made this clear. Using data from Eurofund, we expose the relationship between various components of trust (public authorities, healthcare systems, science, etc.) and behavior of the Europe-ans during the COVID-19 pandemic (willingness to comply with quarantine require-ments and get vaccinated). Intention to get vaccinated is most closely related to trust in science and in the healthcare system, while the willingness to comply with sanitary re-gime is most closely related to trust in government. Readiness to comply with epidemi-ological rules and willingness to get vaccinated vary greatly between countries. In the countries with higher institutional and interpersonal trust people express greater willingness to follow epidemiological recommendations announced by authorities. We se-lected two clusters from our sample (with lower and higher levels of trust) and chose Italy and Sweden as representatives of these clusters to illustrate differential responses to sanitary restrictions imposed by government agencies. In Italy's case, ambiguous attitude, and in Sweden's case, almost complete acceptance resulted in different levels of COVID-19 mortality. At the same time, both countries have achieved relatively high vaccination rates, which reflects reliance on science and reliability of national health systems. © 2022, Institute of Europe Russian Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

COVID-19 SHOCKS: CROSS-COUNTRY ANALYSIS

The COVID-19 pandemic that engulfed the world in early 2020 did not make an exception for anyone. However, the degree of its impact on countries and social groups varies significantly. This article discusses several factors that can shape these differences, focusing specifically on the correlation between the excess mortality during 2020–2021 and various dimensions of social vulnerability, specifically the ones that are caused by unprotected or low pay employment, self-employment, and higher exposure to work-related social contacts. In order to measure these factors, this study relies on the analysis of the Gini coefficient and some other indices that reflect the specifics of labour markets and social vulnerabilities. The assessment is based on data provided by Eurofound, Eurobarometer, the World Bank and OECD Statistics. The correlation between inequality/vulnerability and excess mortality rates can be explained by higher exposure of vulnerable social groups to the infection and their lower access to high quality healthcare. The econometric analysis supports the hypothesis that the cross-country variation in excess mortality rates during the 2020–2021 COVID-19 pandemics can be partially explained by socioeconomic characteristics of countries in the sample. Vulnerable groups are not only more exposed to health-related risks due to the pandemics but are also less likely to be vaccinated. Larger shares of the vulnerable groups and lower vaccination rates are associated with higher excess mortality rates conditional upon country characteristics such as GDP per capita, the share of university graduates and healthcare expenditures, as well as age structure. This relationship holds for different variables used, different country samples and data sets. © 2022, Russian Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.