The Power of Information: State Capacity and Government Responses to Shocks

ABSTRACT This paper examines how informational state capacity shapes governments' ability to respond to external shocks. We introduce a new measure of this capacity based on whether countries maintain up‐to‐date population censuses, vital registries and agricultural censuses. The measure is simple, transparent and broadly available across Global South countries. Examining government responses to the COVID‐19 pandemic, we find that higher informational capacity in 2019 was associated with significantly lower underreporting of cases in 2020. A monthly analysis and robustness checks—including a sensitivity analysis and an alternative construction of our measure—support this result. Beyond monitoring, countries with higher capacity were also more likely to adopt economic relief policies and did so more quickly. The findings suggest that informational state capacity enhances governments' ability to monitor emergencies and respond with timely policy interventions. Our measure further offers a practical indicator for identifying capacity gaps in vulnerable states.