Measuring and explaining efficiency of pre-vaccine country responses to COVID-19 pandemic: a conditional robust nonparametric approach

In this paper, we propose the use of a conditional nonparametric robust estimator to evaluate countries pre-vaccine responses to the outburst of COVID-19 pandemic. We collect data for 105 countries (comprehending the initial period of the pandemic through the end of May 2021), with variables regarding the death toll, economic indicators, demographic characteristics and non-pharmaceutical interventions. We create a novel empirical framework for estimating efficiency of countries responses in more general terms than simply evaluating healthcare system performance. We use two distinct well-known second-stage approaches: regressing the conditional efficiency scores on the environmental factors, in order to compute measures of managerial efficiency to rank responses; and regressing the ratio of conditional and unconditional scores on conditioning factors, seeking to explore the relationship between non-pharmaceutical interventions and estimated efficiencies. Our results indicate which countries and regions stood out for presenting efficient/inefficient responses and point to an expected conclusion: The environmental factor elderly population has a significant and unfavorable effect on a country efficiency. Furthermore, the factors median stringency index and median retail and recreation visitors change show no significant effect on efficiency.