Better politicians, fewer deaths? Local resilience in overcoming the pandemic crisis in Italy

The quality of institutions is widely recognized as a key determinant of public sector performance across various levels of governance. This paper investigates how institutional quality shaped the resilience of Italian Labour Market Areas during the COVID-19 pandemic. To this end, we introduce a localized, non-parametric Interrupted Time Series (ITS) approach, using long-run mortality data (2004-2023), to construct a data-driven, local-level resilience index. This index captures deviations from