education and full health. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, a child born in a typical country in Sub-Saharan Africa could expect to achieve just 40 percent of her potential human capital, relative to a benchmark of complete education and full health. The data is collected from the World Bank (2018, 2020d). Another indicator in this dimension is the global health security index, an index that takes values from 0 to 100, that captures the prevention of the emergence or release of pathogens, early detection and reporting for epidemics, rapid response to and mitigation of the spread of an epidemic, sufficient and robust health systems to treat the sick and protect health workers, compliance with international norms, and risk environment and vulnerability to biological threats. The data is taken from NTI and Johns Hopkins University. Finally, we gathered information on health indicators such as hospital beds (per 1,000 people), physicians (per 1,000 people) and nurses (per 1,000 people). These indicators are gathered from WDI.

_Macroeconomic Space_ . The variables of macroeconomic space provide information on whether countries had some extent of macroeconomic resilience prior to the pandemic. These variables aim to capture whether the countries had fiscal space, monetary policy space, less risky debt profiles and external savings. We specifically examine the impact of having (liquidity or policy) space on growth amid the pandemic. Fiscal space is proxied by the general government primary balance and the general government gross debt —and both variables are expressed as a percentage of GDP. Monetary policy space is indirectly measured by the rate of annual CPI inflation. External savings are proxied by the current account balance. Finally, the risk profile of public debt is captured by including the composition of public debt by creditor. The regression analysis includes public and publicly guaranteed external debt owed to official creditors (bilateral and multilateral lenders), and to private creditors (bonds, commercial banks, and other private creditors). The data is collected from the IMF’s World Economic Outlook, and the World Bank’s International Debt Statistics.

_Policy Response._ To capture the policy responses to the pandemic, we use the Oxford COVID-19 government response tracker (OxCGRT) and the different components in this index. The overall government response index summarizes information on 17 indicators of government responses (8 indicators on containment and closure policies, 4 indicators on economic policies and 5 indicators on health system policies). We further look at two sub-indices: (a) a containment and health measure, which includes lockdown restrictions and closures), and (b) an economic support index, which captures measures such as income support and debt relief. Finally, we use the OxCGRT stringency index that captures the strictness of lockdown measures affecting people’s behavior — including school closures, workplace closures, and travel bans, among others. The data is obtained from Hale et al. (2020).<sup>19</sup>

> 19 Note that these indexes record the number and strictness of government policies rather than their effectiveness.

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