Description:
This study examines the association of environmental sustainability, governance factors and national culture with COVID-19 impact. Using a sample of 44 countries, we find that that countries with a higher level of corporate carbon emissions suffered from higher COVID-19 impact. Further, countries with higher accountability and government effectiveness are associated with lower COVID-19 impact, which implies productive policy responses to the pandemic in such settings. In addition, the positive association between carbon emissions and COVID-19 impact is less pronounced for countries with individualism culture, suggesting that policy responses such as social distancing may have yielded better results in such cultures