The transition from COVID-19 infections to deaths: Do governance quality and corruption affect it?

We investigate the impact of governance quality and corruption on the propensity of COVID-19 infections to result in deaths, while controlling for a wide range of socio-economic country characteristics, for 139 countries. Governance quality is negatively associated with mortality from COVID-19, for a given number of infections. This result holds for the aggregate governance index and for most of its components, in particular government effectiveness, rule of law, and control of corruption. Corruption among business executives, judges and magistrates, the legislature, and among government officials exerts the largest impact on COVID-induced deaths. We propose directions for future policy initiatives