Pandemic Growth and Benfordness: Empirical Evidence from 176 Countries Worldwide

Abstract

In the battle against the Coronavirus, over 190 territories and countries independently work on one end goal: to stop the pandemic growth. In this context, a tidal wave of data has emerged since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis. Extant research shows that the pandemic data are partially reliable. Only a small group of nations publishes reliable records on COVID-19 incidents. We collected global data from 176 countries and explored the causal relationship between average growth ratios and progress in the reliability of pandemic data. Furthermore, we replicated and operationalized the results of prior studies regarding the conformity of COVID-19 data to Benford’s law. Our outcomes confirm that the average growth rates of new cases in the first nine months of the Coronavirus pandemic explain improvement or deterioration in Benfordness and thus reliability of COVID-19 data. We found significant evidence for the notion that nonconformity to BL rises by the growth of new cases in the initial phases of outbreaks.