and significant.<sup>20</sup> Especially, the stringency measure has a robust negative coefficient. Containment and health and government economic support are negative and insignificant. Therefore, stringency measures and containment measures implemented by the government that target any specific segment of population or geographical area rather than generalized containment may help prevent the domestic economy from falling into a further slump. If the government fails to deliver any effective pandemic policies, then the economy suffers and growth declines further.<sup>21</sup> Our empirical results on the effect of health indicators are mixed. Therefore, they fail to show any significant impacts of health indicators in the regressions. This could be attributed to the fact that measuring impacts via the health channel is challenging as COVID-19 is still a novel disease.<sup>22</sup> Empirical evidence supports the existence of a negative relationship between trade exposure and growth. The deleterious effects of trade exposure can be partly explained by vulnerabilities to commodity price volatility (e.g. international oil prices). The estimated coefficients of international trade openness have a negative and insignificant impact on economic growth (-0.0116 points in regression [1] of Table 1).

The regression analysis finds that countries that are more dependent on external financing could experience deeper declines in economic growth. For instance, in regression [1] in Table 1, the estimated adverse impact of (gross) capital flows on economic growth at -0.0832 is significantly deeper than the one of trade openness. Therefore, countries with greater dependence on external financing tend to have larger declines in growth. When looking at the composition of capital inflows, the regression analysis finds that both portfolio investment inflows and other investment inflows are significantly positive at 0.264 and 0.228, respectively in regression [7] of Table 1. Consequently, portfolio investment inflows and other investment inflows help prevent further declines in GDP growth. The coefficients of FDI flows have insignificantly negative impacts on economic growth (i.e. at -0.0378 in regression [7] of Table 1). FDI is one of the major capital flows into the Sub-Saharan Africa region. Most likely, FDI activity is more dynamic in commodityabundant countries because those commodities attract massive foreign investments.

The cushion created by the fiscal space matters even if the economy’s structure tends to be driven by primary goods/commodities. For instance, empirical evidence suggests that natural resource/commodity exporters<sup>23</sup> experience larger negative and significant impacts on economic 20 The government response indicator (from Oxford Policy Tracker) captures a series of containment and health measures as well as economic support measures implemented by governments in response to COVID-19. The containment and health measures include school closings, workplace closings, cancelation of public events, restrictions on gathering, closure of public transportation, stay-at-home requirements, restrictions on internal movement, and international travel controls. The economic support measures record if the government is providing direct cash payments to people who lose their jobs or cannot work or if it is freezing households’ financial obligations. 21 The negative co-movement between the stringency of containment measures and economic activity is also found with other performance indicators such as consumption, investment, and industrial production, among others (IMF 2020).

22 Medical researchers’ work is still on going and in progress, and they are still finding new evidence. Accordingly, there have not been always definite treatments of COVID-19 yet.

23 Although countries with more concentrated economic structures are vulnerable to the crisis, accumulated savings can work as a cushion against shocks. Oil abundant countries, for instance, experience relatively lower declines relative to non-oil abundant countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (-5.5 vis-à-vis -6.3 percent, respectively). Prior 13