Countries have taken different approaches to controlling COVID-19. Analyzing the costs and benefits of different policies, Sachs (2020) has concluded that the total cost of using either low-cost epidemic control measures (e.g., hygiene, testing/tracing/isolating, travel restrictions) or high-cost control measures (e.g., economic shutdown) is lower than the cost of not controlling the epidemic at all. Sachs also found that low-cost policies in the Asia-Pacific region are more effective than high-cost ones in the North Atlantic region. Sachs has therefore proposed that the North Atlantic region should learn from the best low-cost practices of the Asia-Pacific region in suppressing the COVID-19 epidemic.
This note will supplement the Sachs (2020) analysis in two ways. The first supplement is to identify what we think to be the most important cultural and institutional features that helped generate the different national performances.
