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Intersectional Political Economy and COVID-19

Paper Session

Sunday, Jan. 9, 2022 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM (EST)

Hosted By: Union for Radical Political Economics
  • Chair: Daniele Tavani, Colorado State University

Saving Lives and the Economy: The Role of Fiscal Policy in the COVID-19 Recession

Laura Carvalho
,
University of São Paulo

Abstract

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic many countries had intense debates over how
to combine the necessary social distancing and health measures along the economic response.
This study takes a step forward in this direction by estimating the impact of the government
responses on the economic performance for a group of countries around the world in 2020.
Gathering information from the OECD weekly tracker of economic activity, The Oxford
COVID-19 Government Response Tracker and Google Mobility, we built a comprehensive
dataset for 45 countries along 2020. Through the estimation of two-way fixed effect regressions,
our results suggest that fiscal stimuli were very significant in mitigating the recession. The
potential short-term negative impact on GDP, resulting from the necessary social distance and
restrictions on production, could be more than offset by an active fiscal policy and a commitment
by public managers to health policies. In particular, the fiscal effort measure, which includes
expenditures aimed at preserving family income and providing relief to companies, is the only
variable that, regardless of the specification used in the model, has a positive and significant
effect for the GDP projections variation. The results indicate that increases of 1% in public
spending in relation to GDP promoted an increase in the weekly OECD economic activity index
of between 1.9% and 2.1% in relation to its initial value.

Coronavirus Fiscal Policy in the United States: Lessons from Feminist Political Economy

Katherine Moos
,
University of Massachusetts-Amherst

Abstract

Using the United States’ fiscal response to COVID-19 in March and April 2020 as a case study,
this paper explores the implications the US coronavirus legislation had for the societal
distribution of responsibility for social reproduction among US households, employers, and the
federal government – and the legislation’s effect on women and racialized minorities. It builds on
feminist political economy research that argues that, prior to the coronavirus pandemic,
economic crisis and stagnating conditions for workers in the US had increased the role of
households and the US government in social reproduction relative to the contribution of
employers. The paper argues that the US federal government has responded to the COVID-19
crisis through an infusion of income support, but it has failed to increase its long-term socially
reproductive commitments and has not addressed the intensified socially reproductive burden
placed on households or the declining role of employers in working-class social reproduction.

Feminist Radical Political Economy on COVID Capitalism: Endogeneity, Destabilization, and Public Health (Slides are paper presented in session)

Jennifer Cohen
,
University of Miami and University of the Witwatersrand

Abstract

An historically-informed perspective demonstrates that Covid-19 should be understood as
internal to the workings of capitalism. By locating the pandemic in the history of capitalism,we
show how race, gender, and class structures are crucial to understanding the state of capitalism
prior to the pandemic and the impacts of the pandemic within capitalism. The way in which
capital organises production and reproduction combines with structures of oppression to create
the racialised and gendered vulnerable populations who suffer the worst impacts of Covid-19.
Analyses of capitalism in feminist political economy illustrate how economic growth – capital
accumulation – depends on women’s oppression in multiple, fundamental ways having to do
with their paid work. All of that, in turn, depends on women’s unpaid work. Women’s work, and by extension their health, is the foundation upon which both production and social reproduction
rely. Recognising the pandemic as endogenous to capitalism heightens the contradiction
between a world shaped by the profit motive and the domestic and global requirements of public
health.

The Political Economy of the COVID-19 Public Health Policies in China

Zhongjin Li
,
University of Missouri-Kansas City

Abstract

The Covid-19 Pandemic has hit the world hard and challenged the willingness and capacity of
the states globally to respond to the health and economic crisis. As the first country to
experience and recover from the emergency, China has adopted a wide range of public health
responses. In this paper, I focus on these non-pharmaceutical policy interventions (NPIs) and
reveal the three main features: prioritization of prevention and mitigation, labor intensive
arrangement, and mass mobilization. From a historical comparative perspective and drawing on
statistical analysis, I explore the role, nature, and mode of state invention in the public health
sector and trace its historical roots in the socialist era, and its change in the recent market
reforms. Strong evidence supports the effectiveness of NPIs on fighting against the virus and
restarting the economy. The crucial role of state-led community care provision resembles the
labor accumulation in rural infrastructure building and has great potential for social reproduction
and public-sector job creation. This suggests a realistic alternative to the dilemma between jobs
and health and underscores the importance of coordinated public health responses, particularly
for the global south.
JEL Classifications
  • I1 - Health
  • P1 - Capitalist Systems