The ‘Great Reset’ to tackle Covid-19 and other crises

Abstract

The 2021 World Economic Forum pledged a ‘Great Reset’, recognising that the Covid-19 crisis would be compounded by several other crises, actual and threatened, including the climate crisis, financial crises, social and economic inequality, and the threat of further pandemics. The articles in this follow-up Special Issue also relate to the connections made by the World Economic Forum to the other serious challenges facing humanity, and in particular inequality – which in turn can exacerbate the risk of financial crises, and the threat of climate crisis. In terms of social and economic inequality, the worse off tended to be hit harder by effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, both globally and within individual countries. In ‘The Korean government’s public health responses to the Covid-19 epidemic through lens of industrial policy’, Hee-Young Shin explores the idea that the success of the Korean government’s non-pharmaceutical interventions can be best understood through the lens of an industrial policy framework, rather than merely administrative efficiency.