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The rapid spread of the COVID-19 pandemic upended societies across the world, with billions forced into lockdowns. As countries contemplated instating and rolling back lockdown measures, and considered the impact of pandemic fatigue on policy measures, and furthermore to prepare for the improved management of future pandemics, this study examines the effectiveness of policy measures in limiting the spread of infections and fatalities.

The methodological approach in the study centres on a fixed effects panel regression analysis and employs the COVID-19 Government Response Stringency Index, which comprises eight containment measures and three health campaigns, with progressive degrees of stringency, in order to investigate the efficacy of government policies.

Findings suggest that some government policies were effective at reducing implicit mortality rates, infection cases and fatalities during the first four months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Solid stringency measures to reduce mortality rates include public gathering restrictions on more than 100 attendees, and international travel limits for developed countries and islands. Fatalities can further be reduced through the closing of public transport, whereas infection cases also experience benefits from public information campaigns. Comparable results are observed in a robustness test across 12 months.

Some non-pharmaceutical policies are shown to be more effective than others at reducing the spread of infections, fatalities and mortality rates, and support policymakers to manage future pandemics more effectively.

The year 1848 is considered by historians as a political and economic turning point in France: a major political crisis took place in the form of the February Revolution, accompanied by extensive financial troubles for the French government. The economists of that time actively debated the economic causes and consequences of the crisis. This chapter is devoted to the analysis of these financial controversies in French economic thought around 1848. If the political and philosophical debates of 1848 between the liberals and the socialists are quite well known by historians of economic thought, their financial side has been relatively neglected. According to the authors of this chapter, it is nevertheless of great interest to examine the liberal and socialist ideas of that time. This chapter aims to investigate this little-studied question by raising three main issues: the first one consists of presenting the different diagnoses of the 1848 financial crisis from socialist and liberal viewpoints. Second, it proposes an analysis of the content of theoretical controversies about ways to overcome the financial troubles, particularly regarding the trade-off between taxation and debt. Lastly, it emphasizes the role of this period for the subsequent constitution of a financial orthodoxy in France.

Responding to the growing amounts of power that corporations exert within society, stakeholder groups are increasingly placing companies under pressure to prove their commitments to the idea of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Despite various mechanisms such as codes and principles being implemented in order to guide corporate actions, a clear need has been identified for better measuring tools of CSR. The bench marks is one of the most comprehensive CSR frameworks available and was chosen by this study to develop into a practical measuring instrument. The purpose of this paper is to report on the development process of the instrument.

Two main research methods have been applied, namely a literature review and an empirical study which included theoretically recognised phases for measuring instrument development. One of the phases involved a survey with questionnaires administered on 189 randomly selected respondents.

Apart from successfully measuring CSR performance in line with the bench marks, the developed instrument has been found to be useful as a measuring mechanism for corporate personality (CP).

CP valuation is achieved by measuring company behaviour in terms of the theoretical dimensions of CSR and sustainable development. In doing so, this instrument provides companies with a unique way of identifying their status of being true corporate citizens.