Does 'Data fudging' explain the autocratic advantage? Evidence from the gap between Official Covid-19 mortality and excess mortality.

Abstract

Governments can underreport Covid-19 mortality to make their performance appear more successful than it is. Autocracies are more likely to 'fudge' these data since many autocratic regimes restrict media freedom and thus can prevent domestic media from reporting evidence of undercounting deaths. Autocracies also enjoy greater leverage over reporting health authorities to either fudge data or adopt restrictive definitions of what constitutes Covid-19 mortality. Controlling for other factors that explain official Covid-19 mortality, excess mortality and the difference between the two, our results suggest that any apparent 'autocratic advantage' in fighting the pandemic is likely to only exist in official Covid-19 mortality. Analyzing the gap between excess mortality and official Covid-19 mortality we find that autocracies on average have a larger gap between official Covid-19 mortality data and excess mortality data, which points towards 'autocratic data fudging' of their official Covid-19 mortality statistics.