The recent COVID-19 pandemic highlights the vast differences in approaches to the control and containment of infectious diseases across the world, and demonstrates their varying degrees of success in minimizing the transmission of coronavirus. This paper examines the influence of globalization, its dimensions, and government efficiency on the likelihood and timeliness of government interventions in the form of international travel restrictions. We find that countries with higher government effectiveness and globalization are more cautious regarding the implementation of international travel restriction policies.
We also find that the de jure economic and political dimensions and de facto social dimension of globalization have the strongest influence on the timeliness of policy implementation. These findings highlight the relationship between globalization and protectionist policies as governments respond to significant global events such as a public health crisis as in the case of the current COVID-19 pandemic. The literature seems to agree that greater globalization make a country more susceptible to the emergence and spread of infectious and noncommunicable diseases . Greater connectedness and integration within a global society naturally increases the interactions between diverse populations and the pathways through which potential pathogens can travel and hence, emerge in a local population. Non-pharmaceutical interventions (e.g., social distancing, city lockdowns, travel restrictions) may serve as control measures when pharmaceutical options (e.g., vaccines) are not yet available . However, such non-pharmaceutical measures are often viewed as restrictive in a social, political, and economic context.
Furthermore, our review could not locate research on the relative influence of the social, political, and economic dimensions of globalization on the speed of implementing travel restriction policies. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the vast differences in approaches to the control and containment of coronavirus across the world and has demonstrated the varied success of such approaches in minimizing the transmission of coronavirus. Restrictive government policies formerly deemed impossible have been implemented within a matter of months across democratic and autocratic governments alike. This presents a unique opportunity to observe and investigate a plethora of human behavior and decision-making processes.
We explore the relative weighting of risks and benefits in globalized countries who balance the economic, social, and political benefits of globalization with a higher risk of coronavirus emergence, spread, and extended exposure. Some empirical evidence points to a small yet significant positive relationship between the implementation of international travel restrictions and the time delay in infectious disease emergence and transmission in the focal country . Our results indicate it might be reasonable to assume that global infectious disease forecasting could be improved by including the globalization index while accounting for the mediating role of government effectiveness. Include domestic, nationwide pandemic policies in their model with results to suggest that such policies are effective and promptly enforced to demonstrate the greatest benefits. Geographical regions known hotspots for the emergence and re-emergence of infectious agents could be considered as early candidates for inbound country-specific travel restrictions in the event of mass disease outbreaks.
The findings highlight the dynamic relationship between globalization and protectionism when governments respond to significant global events such as a public health crisis. By acting as proxies for a countries' likelihood and speed of implementation for international travel restriction policies, such measures may predict the likely time delays in disease emergence and transmission across national borders. Among globalized nations, those with high measures of government effectiveness are less likely to impose international travel restriction policies, suggesting some mediating effect. It may also be that high government effectiveness is associated with mechanisms to better evaluate potential costs and benefits of implementing different measures or require approvals, coordination, and action across various levels of governance. Out of the interactions between government effectiveness and de facto measures, social measures of globalization have the greatest influence on likelihood to implement travel restrictions.
To our knowledge, this study is the first to explore the influence of globalization on the timing of international travel restrictions implemented during the recent coronavirus pandemic and the mediating effect of government effectiveness. From a sample of more than 100 countries, we observe that in general, more globalized countries are more likely to implement international travel restrictions policies than their less globalized counterparts. However, we also find that more globalized countries tend to have a higher number of domestic COVID-19 cases before implementing their first travel restriction and also react slower to their first confirmed domestic case of COVID-19. Develop a common vision and promote collaboration with the social economy. Representatives of social economy organisations could be an asset in the development of a number of policies if involved from an early stage.
An agreed vision of their contribution and role in development at national and subnational levels could be beneficial. The plan was presented to the federal and subnational governments with a number of its actions adopted. The city of Amsterdam, in post-pandemic recovery plan, is shifting from a traditional model to a new approach relying on "doughnut economics" 5 that addresses poverty and social needs while also ensuring environmental sustainability. We employ the time-to-event analysis to examine the role of globalization in the timing of international travel restriction policies. Similar to previous studies , we use the marginal risk set model to estimate the expected duration of time until each policy, with increasing strictness, was imposed by each country.
Intuitively, as more stringent policies are less likely to be implemented or adopted early , we stratified the baseline hazards for the four restrictions to allow for differences in policy adoption rate. Yet, when a country adopts a more restrictive travel restriction policy (e.g., total border closure) before implementing the less restrictive ones (e.g., ban on high-risk regions), the latter is effectively imposed . This is important because disproportionally more countries with a higher globalization index contracted the virus early (Fig. S2 in the SI Appendix). A mix of policy measures is needed to help social economy organisations survive in the short term and help shape our societies in a more sustainable and inclusive way for the future. Governments can use this opportunity to develop a shared vision of their future to "build back better", and social economy actors should have a seat at the table.
An action plan to implement that vision would help set a roadmap to which social economy organisations can actively contribute. Policies which promote social innovation and co-operation can assist social economy innovations to scale up impact. To achieve this, social economy organisations will require continued and diversified financial resources, and support to professionalise as well as become digitally savvy in exploiting relevant tools (open source, co-operative platforms). Finally, the development of shared data and information on impact will help keep track of this progress and redirect efforts towards areas with the most fruitful results. Domestic policies implemented in response to the coronavirus pandemic have ranged from school closures and public event cancellations to full-scale national lockdowns. Previous research has hinted that democratic countries, particularly those with competitive elections, were quicker to close schools.
Interestingly, those with high government effectiveness (i.e., those with high-quality public and civil services, policy formulation, and policy implementation) were slower to implement such policies as were the more right-leaning governments . Further, more democratic countries have tended to be more sensitive to the domestic policy decisions of other countries . In particular, government effectiveness – as a proxy of state capacity – can act as a mediator with evidence available that countries with higher effectiveness took longer to implement COVID-19 related responses .
Countries with higher levels of health care confidence also exhibit slower mobility responses among its citizens . Those results may indicate that there is a stronger perception that a well-functioning state is able to cope with such a crisis as a global pandemic like SARS-CoV-2. More globalized countries may therefore take advantage of a better functioning state; weighing advantages and disadvantages of policies and, consequently, slowing down the implementation of restrictive travel policies to benefit longer from international activities.
Regardless, the need to understand the reasons behind the selection of some policy instruments and not others and the associated timing of such decisions is warranted to enable the development and implementation of more appropriate policy interventions . The outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has severely affected the global and Pakistani economy. Major victims of the COVID-19 outbreak are micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises . This article aims to assess the impact of COVID-19 outbreak on these businesses and provide policy recommendations to help MSMEs in reducing business losses and survive through the crisis. We adopted an exploratory methodology with comprehensively reviewing the available literature, including policy documents, research papers, and reports in the relevant field.
Further, to add empirical evidence, we collected data from 184 Pakistani MSMEs by administering an online questionnaire. The results indicate that most of the participating enterprises have been severely affected and they are facing several issues such as financial, supply chain disruption, decrease in demand, reduction in sales and profit, among others. Besides, over 83% of enterprises were neither prepared nor have any plan to handle such a situation. Further, more than two-thirds of participating enterprises reported that they could not survive if the lockdown lasts more than two months. Based on the results of the research, different policy recommendations were proposed to ease the adverse effects of the outbreak on MSMEs.
Although our suggested policy recommendations may not be sufficient to help MSMEs go through the ongoing crisis, these measures will help them weather the storm. Developing partnerships with local authorities to help provide services and mitigate the direct impact of the crisis, especially for the most vulnerable groups. Many municipalities were under pressure to provide assistance to at-risk groups, including a large share of the elderly population. This partnership helped to ensure the provision of essential services to all 290 Swedish municipalities, many of which are in rural areas. In any analysis seeking insights based on government-based data sources, there is concern regarding the availability and quality of reporting as well as the difficulties in drawing robust policy recommendations using these data and the research design of the study.
We control for this by incorporating into our analyses a wide and varied set of data sources and analytical tools. In doing so, we aim to strengthen our findings by demonstrating multiple routes/methods to reach similar conclusions. Nevertheless, care should be taken in interpreting the results of our analyses as correlation does not mean causation.
However, our findings seem to provide strong support for the notion that, in general, more globalized countries are more likely to implement travel restriction policies. However, if they are also high in government effectiveness, they tend to be more hesitant to implement travel restriction policies , particularly when high in de jure economic and political globalization and de facto social globalization. Additionally, measurement errors stemming from states underreporting of outbreaks due to fear of financial losses or lack of testing capacities could also contribute to the explanations of our results.
The influence of open trade agreements, policies favoring globalization and greater social connectedness on the timing of travel restrictions during a pandemic would make logical sense. Globalized countries are more likely to incur financial, economic, and social penalties by implementing restrictive measures that aim to improve population health outcomes (e.g., see ) and hence, will be less inclined to do so. However, countries which are more socially connected may also act more quickly because they are inherently at higher risk of local outbreak and hence, to delay local emergence they may implement international travel restrictions earlier.
Membership and commitments to international organizations , treaties, and binding trade agreements might also prevent or inhibit them from legally doing so , suggesting there are social, trade, and political motivators to maintain 'open' borders. We find that those countries with high government effectiveness and engagement in international political coordination efforts are less likely to implement travel restriction policies and hence, slower to do so. On the other hand, de facto economic globalization, which measures actual economic activities over long distances, is not as strongly related to the timing of travel policy adoption for countries with high government effectiveness. De facto social globalization has the largest effect among other de facto globalization dimensions. These results suggest that a nation with high government effectiveness and more global social, interpersonal, and cultural flows is less likely to implement travel restriction policies in pandemic crises and hence, may delay doing so.
The risk of the COVID-19 crisis is that many of the social economy actors who used all their resources in the emergency response, might not be able to continue to operate in the future due to short-term liquidity issues. As shown in various surveys, the majority of social economy organisations indicate that their situation will worsen without further support from the government. Differentiation should be made between social economy organisations whose primary source of income is based on commercial revenues and those more reliant on public grants.
The latter group is least likely to report high expected drops in turnover over the coming year. The results of our survival analysis suggest that, in general, more globalized countries, accounting for the country-specific timing of the virus outbreak and other factors, are more likely to adopt international travel restrictions policies. However, countries with high government effectiveness and globalization were more cautious in implementing travel restrictions, particularly if through formal political and trade policy integration. This finding is supported by a placebo analysis of domestic NPIs, where such a relationship is absent. Additionally, we find that globalized countries with high state capacity are more likely to have higher numbers of confirmed cases by the time a first restriction policy measure was taken. Since late 2019, COVID-19 has emerged globally as a new, emergent, communicable disease for humans .
A large number of infections and deaths have been reported throughout the year-long pandemic . Collaborations between people and governments to address this common threat have been observed worldwide . A number of impacts have been reported through forums in both formal and informal settings . All of human society has been impacted by this disease, which can be observed in the direct and indirect effects of the disease [7–9]. There are many direct impacts, such as health problems, complications from pathogenesis, economic issues related to access to health care, and reduced quality of life [10–12]. The indirect impact can be measured in the decrease in social relationships, family relationships, quality of education due to online classes, economic losses from the lockdown, etc. [13–15].
However, the severity of the impacts depends on how people can adapt their behaviors, as well as on their education and economic status . Increase public procurement schemes with a focus on sustainable and inclusive social procurement. Sustainable public procurement, as well as procurement with social impact, harnesses existing expenditure on public procurement and directs it towards green and inclusive growth and the attainment of sustainability objectives.
This is in line with UN SDGs (goal 12.7) that promote sustainable public procurement practices. Many governments have encouraged their administrations to use it as a tool to support social economy organisations. Korea promotes its preferential procurement scheme with pre-purchase and direct contracts for relatively small amounts with social economy organisations.
Germany has released a two-year EUR 130 billion coronavirus economic recovery programme which contains a number of measures to boost green or environmentally friendly development. Provide financial resources for social economy organisations that promote social innovation and to adapt business models/operations. Policy makers should strive to create an environment that promotes social innovation and experimentation and help the most promising examples to scale up, including the internationalisation of relevant practices. This requires not only the right policy framework, but also dedicated funds which could absorb the risk of experimentation and promote collaboration and development of prototypes.
While there are many resources for technological innovation, those for social innovation also merit notable investment. The Irish EUR 5 million Innovate Together Fund focuses on addressing critical social or environmental issues related to the COVID-19 crisis and provides grants to non-profit organisations. The "social economy" has played an important role in addressing and mitigating the short- and long-term impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on economy and society. In the short term, social economy actors have assisted the recovery from the crisis by providing innovative solutions that are aimed at strengthening public services to complement government action. In the long term, social economy organisations can help reshape the post-crisis economy by promoting inclusive and sustainable economic models.
Relying on decades of experience, its specific features and underlying principles, the social economy can inspire models of social innovation and a sense of purpose to firms operating in the market economy. Due to the ongoing state of COVID-19 transmission and continued enforcement of travel restriction policies, we are not yet able to fully explore the relationship between globalization and the easing of travel restrictions over time. To this end, further research is required to assess the drivers behind a nation's decision to close its border in a timely fashion, despite their level of globalization. These correlations persist and remain significant when each level of travel restriction is evaluated (see Fig. S3 in SI Appendix).
This shows that more globalized countries are more likely to impose international travel restrictions later, relative to the first confirmed case in the country, regardless of policy strictness. Interestingly, the two least strict policies (i.e., screening and quarantine) have slightly higher correlation coefficients meaning that it took more globalized countries longer to impose these policies relative to the first local COVID-19 case. One would think that the least strict policies would represent a lower barrier to continued globalization and hence, be the more likely route for a COVID-19 response measure for more globalized countries.
The COVID-19 pandemic will exert a greater impact on vulnerable populations, such as hill tribes and stateless populations, due to their economic and educational status. More than 4 million hill tribe people lived in Thailand in 2020, and 30% of hill tribe people do not have Thai citizenship . Those who hold Thai citizenship are able to access all public services, including health and educational institutes, free of charge . The remaining 30% who are not Thai citizens live without support from the government of Thailand . During the COVID-19 pandemic, the central government of Thailand launched many programs to help sustain the economic and physical health of individuals and families .
However, these programs are not provided to those without Thai citizenship . Many government policies include direct and indirect measures to reduce the impacts of the disease. Different age categories experience different levels and forms of impacts; moreover, individual adaptability is also related to different personal backgrounds and social support . Our most recent edition of McKinsey for Kids introduces younger audiences to mangrove forests and explains why building a "business case" for mangroves can help protect Bengal tigers and king cobras. Globalization appears to improve population health outcomes such as infant mortality rate and life expectancy regardless of a country's level of development (i.e., developed, developing, or underdeveloped) .
Links between the dimensions of globalization (i.e., social, political, and economic) and general population health are less clear cut . For less developed countries, the economic dimension of globalization appears to provide the strongest determinant in IMR and LE, whereas for more developed countries, the social aspect of globalization is the strongest factor . In contrast, for low- to middle-income countries, the social and political dimensions of globalization appear most strongly related to the propensity of women to be overweight . This suggests that for the least developed countries, the adoption of western culture, food habits and lifestyle may be detrimental to adult health if not backed up by social and political progress. Hence, it appears there is no definite relationship between the different aspects of globalization (i.e., social, political, and economic), a country's level of development, and health outcomes that hold across all health contexts. Regardless, trade policies and more generally, globalization, influence both a nation's determinants of health and the options and resources available to its health policymakers .
