Replication Data for: Does ‘Data Fudging’ Explain the Autocratic Advantage? Evidence from the Gap between Official Covid-19 Mortality and Excess Mortality

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.各国政府或会低报新冠死亡人数，以美化其抗疫表现，令其成效看似优于实际水平。独裁政权（autocracies）更倾向于篡改此类数据：多数独裁政体限制媒体自由，可阻止本国媒体披露死亡人数被低估的证据；同时，独裁政权对负责上报数据的卫生主管部门拥有更强话语权，可迫使后者篡改数据，或是对新冠死亡病例的认定标准采用限制性定义。在控制了影响官方新冠死亡人数、超额死亡（excess mortality）以及二者差值的其他变量后，本研究结果显示，所谓抗疫领域的"威权优势"，大概率仅存在于官方公布的新冠死亡统计数据中。通过分析超额死亡与官方新冠死亡人数之间的差值，我们发现独裁政权的官方新冠死亡统计数据与实际超额死亡数据的平均差值更大，这表明其官方新冠死亡统计数据存在"威权式数据篡改"行为。