Governments' Responses to COVID-19

Responding to an outbreak of a novel COVID-19, governments all around the world implemented public health and economic measures to contain the spread of the virus and to support the economy. Public health measures include travel restrictions, bans on mass gatherings, school closing and domestic lockdown among others. Economic measures include wage support, cash transfers, interest rates cuts, tax cuts and delays, and support to exporters or importers. This paper presents a unique dataset of governments’ responses to the COVID-19. The dataset codes the policy interventions with their dates at the country-level for more than 200 countries in the first quarter of 2020 (January 1st – April 14th, 2020). The generation of detailed datasets on the measures taken by governments is important and can help to generate robust evidence to support public health and economic decision making.