Table A4.

Institutional quality and COVID-19 infection and mortality rates in tropical countries.

Variables	Ln (Infection/Test)	Ln (Death/Infection)
		(1)	(2)
Ln (Wet bulb Temperature)	−25.44	−10.89	−3.424
	(35.32)	(24.28)	(25.65)
Ln (Wet bulb Temperature)-Squared	4.701	1.936	0.663
	(6.082)	(4.221)	(4.465)
Population Over 60 years (%)	0.306***	0.0946*
	(0.0893)	(0.0516)
CPI (Corruption Perception Index)	−0.0130	−0.0550***	−0.0424***
	(0.0244)	(0.0172)	(0.0130)
Polity2	0.436***	−0.137*	−0.175*
	(0.122)	(0.0802)	(0.0968)
CPI#Polity2	−0.00827***	0.00398*	0.00446*
	(0.00300)	(0.00198)	(0.00245)
Trade/GDP	−0.00237	−0.00537**	−0.00523*
	(0.00301)	(0.00253)	(0.00264)
Ln (GDP per Capita)	−0.0256	−0.113*	−0.114*
	(0.0845)	(0.0607)	(0.0628)
Ln (Urban/Total Population)	−0.0650	0.193	0.143
	(0.193)	(0.144)	(0.173)
Tourism (Outbound to Imports Ratio)	0.0642
	(0.0463)
Ln (Population Density)	−0.247	−0.0703	−0.0883
	(0.238)	(0.122)	(0.126)
Continental Dummy (Ref: Africa)	−0.943		0.642*
Americas (1/0)	(0.602)		(0.379)
	−1.461**		0.576
Asia (1/0)	(0.630)		(0.725)
Constant	31.25	12.05	2.031
	(50.18)	(34.83)	(36.15)
Observations	45	51	51
R-squared	0.579	0.406	0.407

Note: Robust standard errors in parentheses. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1. Corruption Perception Index (CPI) is measured from high level of corruption (0) to the lowest level (100) and Polity2 measures the level of democracy on the scale of −10 to 10. Infection and death are measured per million of the population, and tourism refers to outbound tourism expenditure as a ratio of total imports of the nation. Except the climate variable and the infection and mortality rate which are for 2020 and the Polity2 data which is 2018, data on all the other variables are for 2019.