Covid-19 and lockdown policies: A structural simulation model of a bottom-up recession in four countries PDF Download

Author: Robinson, Sherman
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 56

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Book Description
This paper considers different approaches to modelling the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic/lockdown shocks. We review different modelling strategies and argue that, given the nature of the bottom-up recession caused by the pandemic/lockdowns, simulation models of the shocks should be based on a social accounting matrix (SAM) that includes both disaggregated sectoral data and the national accounts in a unified framework. SAM-based models have been widely used to analyze the impact of natural disasters, which are comparable to pandemic/lockdown shocks. The pandemic/lockdown shocks occurred rapidly, in weeks or months, not gradually over a year or more. In such a short period, adjustments through smooth changes in wages, prices and production methods are not plausible. Rather, initial adjustments occur through changes in quantities, altering demand and supply of commodities and employment in affected sectors. In this environment, we use a linear SAM-multiplier model that specifies a fixed-coefficient production technology, linear demand system, fixed savings rates, and fixed prices. There are three different kinds of sectoral shocks that are included in the model: (1) changes in demand due to household lockdown, (2) changes in supply due to industry lockdown, and (3) changes in demand due to induced macro shocks. At the detailed industry level, data are provided for all three shocks and the model imposes the largest of the three. We applied the model on a monthly time step for the period March to June 2020 for four countries: US, UK, Mexico, and South Africa. The models closely replicate observed macro results (GDP and employment) for the period. The results provide detailed structural information on the evolution of the different economies month-by-month and provide a framework for forward-looking scenario analysis. We also use the SAM-multiplier model to estimate the macro stimulus impacts of policies to support affected households. The model focuses attention on the structural features of the economy that define the multiplier process (who gets the additional income and what do they do with it) and provides a more nuanced analysis of the stimulus impact of income support programs than can be done with aggregated macro models.

Author: Badi H. Baltagi
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
ISBN: 1800716958
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 143

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Book Description
The Economics of COVID-19 contains selected contributions analysing the effects of the global pandemic on macroeconomics, computable general equilibrium models and financial markets, as well as health studies proposing to improve the traditional epidemic models.

Author: Arndt, Channing
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 34

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Book Description
Prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, South Africa confronted an unfolding economic crisis. Today, the economic situation has worsened in essentially every dimension. If there is a silver lining to this terrible pandemic from the perspective of the South African economy, it could be found in an enhanced willingness to implement reform measures designed to rekindle growth, improve equity, and drive sustainable development whilst recognizing significant fiscal constraints. To this end, this paper focuses on three areas: skills; food systems, nutrition, and health; and urban structure. In each area, we first briefly consider long run perspectives and then turn attention to high return positive steps that can be implemented in the very near term and are consistent with the realization of a positive long run vision. We find that much greater openness to immigration of highly skilled and experienced workers (and their families) stands out as a rapidly implementable policy that offers strong potential to stimulate growth, create jobs, and reduce inequality at low costs to government and with low risk. With respect to food systems, nutrition, and health, we point to a solid basis for optimism about growth and employment prospects in the long term. We also highlight the potential benefits of holistic perspectives that include implications for nutrition and health. Turning to the very near term, we underline the need to reduce the policy uncertainty associated with land reform. In this optic, we recommend consideration of a focus of reform in the near term on favorable dryland areas that can be equipped with supplemental irrigation, with the goal of permitting these areas to specialize in higher value products. Judicious water resource use planning must accompany this policy. Turning to urban structure, we note the persistence of the spatial inequities entrenched by the apartheid era. With tight fiscal constraints on government investment that are likely to extend to the medium term, we seek to refocus policy on measures designed to increase efficiency and equity outcomes derived from existing infrastructure. The analyses of these three areas complement the growth agenda released by the National Treasury in August 2019 and the policy discussions contained in a series of policy papers published by Economic Research South Africa (ERSA) over 2021.

Author: van Seventer, Dirk
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 73

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Book Description
As the South African economy emerges from the downturn induced by COVID-19, policy makers are concerned with recovery, reconstruction, and transformation. This paper focuses on the recovery from the severely depressed levels of economic activity that occurred in April 2020. However, before considering the period after the economic trough of April 2020, a mention of economic conditions prior to the pandemic is worthwhile. In brief, economic performance was terrible by almost any metric. Furthermore, economic performance had been poor since 2008, with evidence pointing to ongoing deterioration culminating in the fourth quarter of 2019, when per capita GDP contracted, unemployment ticked upwards to its highest level since 1994, productivity declined, and inequality worsened. The striking difficulties of the South African economy in avoiding/absorbing shocks-whether internally generated, such as shocks to electricity supply, or externally generated, such as changes in terms of trade or investor sentiment in relation to emerging markets-have been an integral part of this disappointing economic performance over time. In short, the situation prevailing prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic was one of economic weakness. Beginning from this position of weakness, the economic shock related to COVID-19 was enormous, likely the largest single economic shock in the history of South Africa. According to official statistics, GDP in the second quarter of 2020 was approximately 17% below the level registered in the second quarter of 2019. In assessing this shock, it is important to recall that GDP is a flow concept. One can, in principle, consider the volume of flow over any arbitrary period: a day, a week, a month, a quarter, a semester, a year, and so forth. The lockdown associated with COVID-19 precipitated an extraordinarily rapid decline in economic activity. Indeed, the available analytics and data point to a trough in economic activity, or flow value of GDP, at less than 70% of the level that would have pertained in the absence of the pandemic, or a greater than 30% decline in the flow rate of GDP (Arndt et al 2020). If we accept a 17% reduction as the average flow rate of GDP over the quarter and we accept that the economic shock related to COVID-19 was unprecedently rapid and drove a decline in the flow value of GDP of much more than 17% at the trough (which probably occurred sometime in late April or early May), then we must also accept a rapid recovery in economic activity in May and June in order to achieve an average decline of 17% over the quarter. Furthermore, this relatively rapid recovery continued. GDP in the third quarter of 2020 was “only” about 6% below the levels recorded for the third quarter of 2019, with the corresponding figure for the fourth quarter at about 4%. Other figures, including recent ones, broadly support this basic story. For example, retail sales in February 2021 were up 2.4% year-on-year, with the previous two months, January and December, having registered only a slight decline year-on-year. Correspondingly, manufacturing production and sales were down by 2.1% in February 2021 year-on-year. A few broad observations emerge from this history and the available data. First, the South African economy has exhibited more resilience to the COVID-19 shock than performance up to December 2019 might have led one to expect. In Mexico, for example, the distance between fourth quarter GDP in 2020 and that in 2019 was greater than for the same comparison in South Africa. At the same time, Mexico registered close to twice as many deaths related to COVID-19 per million population as South Africa. Second, multiplier effects are important. As discussed in Arndt et al (2020), multiplier effects accounted for the bulk of the initial economic contraction. However, they also operate positively, buoying the recovery experienced to date and bringing economic activity back towards the levels of 2019. Third, while having GDP about 4% down year-on-year is much better than the 17% decline observed in the second quarter, 4% down is still a deep recession by ordinary standards. While some sectors are producing at close to levels observed in the fourth quarter of 2019, others are more strongly affected. The incidence of these depressed levels of economic activity remains likely to be tilted toward lower-income households, which are more vulnerable to begin with. Overall, there remains substantial slack in the economy, multiplier effects still apply, and many households remain deeply vulnerable to severe economic hardship.

Author: Karl Wennberg
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030942732
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
The 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic have made the authorities to increasingly turn inward and use ethnocentrism, protectionism, and top-down approaches to guide policy on trade, competition, and industrial development. The continuing aftereffects of such policies range from the rise and seeming success of authoritarian states, rise of populist and protectionist trends, and evolving academic agendas inspiring the reemergence of top-down industrial policies across the world. This open access edited volume contains contributions from over 30 scholars with expertise in economics, innovation, management, and economic history. The chapters offer unique theoretical and empirical contributions discussing topics such as how industrial policies affect risk, incentives, and information for investments. They also address the policy perspectives on new technologies such as AI and its implications for market entry, the role for independent entrepreneurship in increasingly regulated markets, and whether governments should focus on market interventions or institutional capacity-building. Questioning the Entrepreneurial State initiates a much sought-after debate on the notion of an Entrepreneurial State. It discusses the dangers of top-down approaches to industrial policy, examines lessons from such approaches for future policy design, and calls attention to the progress of open and contestable markets in a sound economy and society. “Creative destruction, innovation and entrepreneurship are at the core of economic growth. The government has a clear role, to provide the basic fabric of a dynamic society, but industrial policy and state-owned companies are the boulevard of broken dreams and unrealized visions. This important message is convincingly stated in Questioning the Entrepreneurial State.” Anders Borg, former Minister of Finance, Sweden “Misreading the dynamism of American entrepreneurship, European intellectuals and policy makers have embraced a dangerous fantasy: catching up requires constructing an entrepreneurial state. This book provides a vital antidote: The entrepreneur comes first: The state may support. It cannot lead.” Amar Bhidé, Thomas Schmidheiny Professor of International Business, Tufts University “This important new book subjects the emergence of the entrepreneurial state, which reflects a shift in the locus of entrepreneurship from the individual to the public sector, to the scrutiny of rigorous analysis. The resulting concerns, flaws and biases inherent in the entrepreneurial state exposed are both alarming and sobering. The skill and scholarly craftsmanship brought to bear in this crucial analysis is evident throughout the book, along with the even, but ultimately consequential thinking of the authors. A must read for researchers and thought leaders in business and policy." David Audtretsch, Distinguished Professor, Ameritech Chair of Economic Development, Indiana University

Author: National Intelligence Council
Publisher: Cosimo Reports
ISBN: 9781646794973
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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Book Description
"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.

Author: Bill Gates
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0593534492
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
Governments, businesses, and individuals around the world are thinking about what happens after the COVID-19 pandemic. Can we hope to not only ward off another COVID-like disaster but also eliminate all respiratory diseases, including the flu? Bill Gates, one of our greatest and most effective thinkers and activists, believes the answer is yes. The author of the #1 New York Times best seller How to Avoid a Climate Disaster lays out clearly and convincingly what the world should have learned from COVID-19 and what all of us can do to ward off another catastrophe like it. Relying on the shared knowledge of the world’s foremost experts and on his own experience of combating fatal diseases through the Gates Foundation, Gates first helps us understand the science of infectious diseases. Then he shows us how the nations of the world, working in conjunction with one another and with the private sector, how we can prevent a new pandemic from killing millions of people and devastating the global economy. Here is a clarion call—strong, comprehensive, and of the gravest importance.

Author: Ms. Dora Benedek
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1498314902
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 35

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Book Description
The COVID-19 pandemic hit countries’ development agendas hard. The ensuing recession has pushed millions into extreme poverty and has shrunk government resources available for spending on achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This Staff Discussion Note assesses the current state of play on funding SDGs in five key development areas: education, health, roads, electricity, and water and sanitation, using a newly developed dynamic macroeconomic framework.

Author: World Bank
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 1464816476
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
Human capital—the knowledge, skills, and health that people accumulate over their lives—is a central driver of sustainable growth, poverty reduction, and successful societies. More human capital is associated with higher earnings for people, higher income for countries, and stronger cohesion in societies. Much of the hard-won human capital gains in many economies over the past decade is at risk of being eroded by the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic. Urgent action is needed to protect these advances, particularly among the poor and vulnerable. Designing the needed interventions, targeting them to achieve the highest effectiveness, and navigating difficult trade-offs make investing in better measurement of human capital now more important than ever. The Human Capital Index (HCI)—launched in 2018 as part of the Human Capital Project—is an international metric that benchmarks the key components of human capital across economies. The HCI is a global effort to accelerate progress toward a world where all children can achieve their full potential. Measuring the human capital that children born today can expect to attain by their 18th birthdays, the HCI highlights how current health and education outcomes shape the productivity of the next generation of workers and underscores the importance of government and societal investments in human capital. The Human Capital Index 2020 Update: Human Capital in the Time of COVID-19 presents the first update of the HCI, using health and education data available as of March 2020. It documents new evidence on trends, examples of successes, and analytical work on the utilization of human capital. The new data—collected before the global onset of COVID-19—can act as a baseline to track its effects on health and education outcomes. The report highlights how better measurement is essential for policy makers to design effective interventions and target support. In the immediate term, investments in better measurement and data use will guide pandemic containment strategies and support for those who are most affected. In the medium term, better curation and use of administrative, survey, and identification data can guide policy choices in an environment of limited fiscal space and competing priorities. In the longer term, the hope is that economies will be able to do more than simply recover lost ground. Ambitious, evidence-driven policy measures in health, education, and social protection can pave the way for today’s children to surpass the human capital achievements and quality of life of the generations that preceded them.

Author: Tom Britton
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030309002
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 477

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Book Description
Focussing on stochastic models for the spread of infectious diseases in a human population, this book is the outcome of a two-week ICPAM/CIMPA school on "Stochastic models of epidemics" which took place in Ziguinchor, Senegal, December 5–16, 2015. The text is divided into four parts, each based on one of the courses given at the school: homogeneous models (Tom Britton and Etienne Pardoux), two-level mixing models (David Sirl and Frank Ball), epidemics on graphs (Viet Chi Tran), and statistics for epidemic models (Catherine Larédo). The CIMPA school was aimed at PhD students and Post Docs in the mathematical sciences. Parts (or all) of this book can be used as the basis for traditional or individual reading courses on the topic. For this reason, examples and exercises (some with solutions) are provided throughout.