The role of emergency aid in mitigating the local effects of the COVID-19 pandemic: evidence from Espírito Santo, Brazil

ABSTRACT

This paper estimates the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the microplanning regions of Espírito Santo, Brazil, and evaluates how the public policy emergency aid (auxílio emergencial, Portuguese acronym) mitigates its effects. We use the hypothetical partial extraction method in an interregional input-output system. The main results reveal that emergency aid attenuated the impact of the pandemic in all microregions, particularly in the poorest ones. The main effects were observed in the service activities. The applied modelling is able to evaluate the effects of national public policy, considering the specificities of local economies.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19 pandemic
• emergency aid
• input-output
• Espírito Santo

JEL CODES:

• C67
• R15
• R23

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Luiz Carlos de Santana Ribeiro and Gervásio Ferreira do Santos gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), Brazil.

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTION STATEMENT

LCSR, GFS, RBC, JFSF: conceptualisation, methodology, software, data curation, formal analysis, writing – original draft, preparation, visualisation and validation. EMT, ARFR: writing – review & editing.

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

Data can be made available upon request.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ETHICS STATEMENT

This research did not require ethical approval as it does not involve human or animal subjects and does not use sensitive data.

Notes

1 For more information on municipalities in the administrative regions, see Ordinary Law No. 9768 of 28 December 2011. Available at: http://www3.al.es.gov.br/Arquivo/Documents/legislacao/html/LEI97682011.html.

2 The 66 municipalities without isolation data are distributed across all 10 microregions of the state of Espírito Santo. Under such circumstances, it was necessary for each of these municipalities to have neighbourhood relations (>0) with the remaining 12 municipalities for the construction of a weighted index. The application of contiguity criteria would lead to additional issues, such as the lack of neighbours with isolation data for a reasonable number of municipalities without data. The exclusive use of inverse distance is common in spatial econometric studies.