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Abstract
Counterfactual estimates of excess deaths in Russian regions in 2020 are compared with actual deaths to measure the initial COVID impact. COVID is a real threat to high labor productivity regions and those with relatively bigger defense sectors. Corruption is surprisingly found to lower excess deaths. Legacy Soviet human capital and early Putin era democracy don’t appear to impact excess deaths. Urban males are most threatened with an even greater negative impact on the economy as COVID moves into working age brackets in the medium term. Living in rural areas and/or in regions far from Moscow was relatively safer in 2020.
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Notes
1 Several regions did not have data for the legacy variables and distance to Moscow. For each region, we chose an adjacent region’s data to fill in the missing numbers. Moscow Oblast (Moscow city), Leningrad oblast (St. Petersburg), Republic of Adygea (Krasnodar), Ingushetia (North Ossetia), Karachevo-Cherkass (Kabardino-Balkar), Chechnya (North Ossetia), Khanti-Mansi and Yamalo-Nenets (Tyumen), Republic of Altai (Altai Krai), Khakasia (Altai Krai), Jewish Oblast (Amur), and Chukchi (Magadan).
2 Some preliminary regressions with a common constant term yielded a much poorer fit and a coefficient always insignificant at the 15% level. Interaction terms with Defense, Labor Productivity, and Economic Uncertainty were tried but did not improve the model fit at all and were individually statistically insignificant.