Great Lockdown Research Articles

Systematic assessment of South Korea’s capabilities to control COVID-19

South Korea’s COVID-19 control strategy has been widely emulated. Korea’s ability to rapidly achieve disease control in early 2020 without a “Great Lockdown” despite its proximity to China and high population density make its achievement particularly intriguing. This paper helps explain Korea’s pre-existing capabilities which enabled the rapid and effective implementation of its COVID-19 control strategies. A systematic assessment across multiple domains demonstrates that South Korea’s advantages in controlling its epidemic are owed tremendously to legal and organizational reforms enacted after the MERS outbreak in 2015. Successful implementation of the Korean strategy required more than just a set of actions, measures and policies. It relied on a pre-existing legal framework, financing arrangements, governance and a workforce experienced in outbreak management.

The long downturn: The impact of the great lockdown on formal employment

In this paper, we use administrative data covering Mexico’s formal labor market to investigate the employment effects of the Great Lockdown (GL). Our results show that the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown caused Mexico’s formal sector to contract by 5% by November of 2020. By August, men’s jobs started to recover, while women’s jobs remain stagnant. We then document heterogeneous effects by age, income, size of the firms, and economic sector activity. The most affected economic agents during the pandemic include the youngest workers (15–29- years-old), oldest workers (over 60 years old), low-income earners, small-sized firms (6−50 workers), medium-sized firms (51−250 workers), workers in the construction industry, and the hospitality-focused service sectors. Finally, we test different state-level factors that may explain heterogeneity within Mexico: state-level reopenings and lockdowns, infection risk, and stimulus payments. Our findings suggest more considerable employment losses in states that experienced successive lockdowns.

Kako smo dočekali krizu izazvanu pandemijom kovida 19

The paper aims to point out the strength and effects of the shock of the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic on the global and domestic economy. Effects differ depending on the characteristics of individual economies and the response of economic policy makers. The crisis called "the great lockdown" features: 1) suspension of activity in some sectors and huge declines in others, with pronounced asymmetry and 2) implementation of robust packages of monetary and fiscal policy measures. The paper focuses on the measures adopted in Serbia to mitigate the negative effects of the pandemic on the domestic economy. It elaborates on the temporary measures adopted by the National Bank of Serbia (NBS), which helped preserve stability in the foreign exchange market, ensured efficient functioning of the money market, liquidity support to all sectors and more favourable financing conditions, sustained credit activity and supported the domestic real sector. According to our estimate, if the monetary and fiscal policy measures had not been adopted, the fall in Serbia's economic activity in 2020 would have exceeded 6%, while growth in 2021 would be modest, failing to reach the pre-pandemic growth dynamics even in the medium term. The adoption and implementation of the robust package of measures was possible because Serbia faced the crisis in a good macroeconomic and fiscal position owing to the strengthened economy and implementation of structural reforms in the past period. In fact, Serbia can serve as the example of a country confirming the importance of strengthening the economy on sustainable grounds in the past eight years, which created room for the adoption of comprehensive economic measures to support citizens and businesses, in order to preserve production capacities and jobs.

Nowcasting Euro Area GDP with News Sentiment: A Tale of Two Crises

This paper shows that newspaper articles contain timely economic signals that can materially improve nowcasts of real GDP growth for the euro area. Our text data is drawn from fifteen popular European newspapers, that collectively represent the four largest Euro area economies, and are machine translated into English. Daily sentiment metrics are created from these news articles and we assess their value for nowcasting. By comparing to competitive and rigorous benchmarks, we find that newspaper text is helpful in nowcasting GDP growth especially in the first half of the quarter when other lower-frequency soft indicators are not available. The choice of the sentiment measure matters when tracking economic shocks such as the Great Recession and the Great Lockdown. Non-linear machine learning models can help capture extreme movements in growth, but require sufficient training data in order to be effective so become more useful later in our sample. JEL Classification: C43, C45, C55, C82, E37

I Was Learning Economics at the Cost of the Economy

COVID-19, a virus of the size of 0.12 microns, had crippled the global economy with 19.14 million people infected as of April 15, 2020, increased to 37.11 million as of October 11, 2020 as per the COVID-19 Weekly Epidemiological Update published by World Health Organization (WHO). The COVID-19 count as of March 23, 2021 was more than 122 million, suppressing the last year’s rate of growth of the same. Economic activities across the globe had been stalled after February 2020. The world has been caged in a Great Lockdown. For the vast majority of people, this has been the biggest economic upset of their lives. There were many causes of recession delineated in the contemporary research papers. Nevertheless, too many causes of the crisis, too many research papers, so many techniques for optimization and too many surveys, etc., frequently divert the focus. We should not lose focus in the sea of numerous causes of recession. Therefore, the objective of the present paper is more specific: “Was conservative/defensive stance in the risk management in the regulatory policymaking post-global financial recession (2007-10) foreboding or worthy?”. The subprime crisis of 2007-08 and the economic recession that followed and many significant economic and socio political events after 2010, e.g., the sovereign debt crisis in Greece, European credit crisis, Brexit, the Venezuelan hyperinflation in 2014, China-United State trade war (July 6, 2018-present), etc., had left many economists on the defensive stance in the policy research/policy prescriptions. We can’t deny that scholars belonging to pre- and post-global financial crisis (2007-2010) generally possessed opposite views. For example, Berkowitz and O’Brien (2002) argued that 99th percentile VaR forecasts were conservative; however, recommendations by the BASEL committee of banking supervision (BCBS) since 2010 were 99th and 99.9th percentile VaR forecasts. It is difficult to judge if economic policies post-global financial crisis were impartial or for espousing a specific interest group/lobby. It is furthermore difficult to speculate if economic policies after 2010 were influenced by the great recession (2007-10)’s debilitating impacts.

НАПРЯМИ РОЗВИТКУ УКРАЇНИ ЗА РІЗНИМИ СЦЕНАРІЯМИ ГЛОБАЛІЗАЦІЙНИХ ПРОЦЕСІВ

The paper identifies the features of participation of Ukraine in neoliberal globalization processes, as well as the course of the 2020-2021 Global hiatus related to the current world financial crisis, COVID-19 pandemic and the “great lockdown” as its consequence. Among others, the study methods include the analysis of relevant scientific publications, screening and content analysis of analytical sources, statistical reports and open media. The research goal is to forecast possible ways of socio-economic development of Ukraine after the COVID-19 crisis using the potential options of the global future proposed by A.T. Kearney (2016). Using SWOT analysis, the prospects for the development of Ukraine and its regions are detailed according to the four very different potential scenarios: globalization 3.0, polarization, islandization and commonization, that highlight the scientific novelty of the research. The most probable (symbiosis of globalization and polarization) and the most preferable (commonization) scenarios are determined. At the same time, a contribution to the international scientific discourse on the Global hiatus concept was made, as well as to the discussion on the importance of increasing the regulatory impact of state, in particular on social issues and environmental protection, and to the discourse on rejection of neoliberal fundamentalism with further transition to post-liberalism and alter-globalization.

Promotion Ban and Heterogeneity in Retail Prices During the Great Lockdown

We study the impact of the Belgium lockdown on retail prices using a unique dataset tracking daily prices and promotions for various products in different stores and retail chains. Two distinctive features of our analysis are the ban on promotions during the first two weeks of the lockdown, and the presence of local pricing retail chains (LP) competing with uniform (national) pricing retail chains (UP). We decompose the price changes into the regular price, the frequency, and the size of promotions. The sale price (i.e., the price paid by consumer purchasing on “sale”) increased by 7% within two weeks and by 2.5% within three months. We then provide an heterogeneity analysis of the regular price variation across stores, retailers, products, and over time. We show that LP chains reacted the most to the lockdown with spatial heterogeneity. The heterogeneity in price response also suggests that the price increase was not driven by cost inflation.

Features of the New Type Global Recession

Research background: The increasing global economic decrease that got the name of Great Lockdown had world pandemic as its trigger. It is already obvious that by its depth, breadth and the number of economics included this recession can be compared to the Great Depression. Shocks nature influences a lot on the structural changes during the recession. The tertiary sector industries, which development is determined by globalization and that are typical for post-industrial economies have the heaviest losses. Now it is impossible to predict are the de-globalization processes permanent or just temporary and which changes in sectoral structure will stay with us after the COVID-19 pandemic. The period of sharp drop is finishing now and it’s obvious that the specific nature of current recession will reveal itself during the market adjustment to the new conditions. Purpose of the article: is to highlight the specific features of recession caused by COVID-19 pandemic, distinguishing it from the previous global recessions. Methods: this article research is based on comparative analysis of main macroeconomic variables trends during the global recessions. Findings & Value added: Current global recession specific features highlited in this article are: industries with a high share of employment are subject to the greatest compression; the economic recession took its origin as a result of the supply shock, and it has a clearly defined industry specifics. The growing uncertainty is limiting the recovery growth potential.; Keynesian measures of countercyclical regulation appeared to be ineffective during the release restrictions phase.

Leadership for learning: lessons from the great lockdown

ABSTRACT The great lockdown of 2020 presented educational organizations around the world with unprecedented challenges, not least to leadership. For the research reported on here, thirteen leaders of schools, colleges and universities were interviewed about how they coped with the situation. It was found that, while the participants were undoubtedly leading in a crisis, they did not exhibit all of the classic signs of crisis leadership. Instead, they remained instructional leaders, but in circumstances radically different from those imagined by any literature on the subject. The degree to which a movement online added formality to relationships between leaders and followers proved to be a major problem, one which encouraged the conclusion that caution should be exercised when envisaging the lockdown period as any kind of template for a technology-enabled future for education as a practice.

COVID-19 Unintended Effects on Breast Cancer in Italy After the Great Lockdown.

Italy introduced social distancing measures, which limited the spread of COVID-19; all the non-life-threatening treatments have been temporarily suspended, including screening programs. This decision leads to unintended effects on the ability to detected neoplasia in their first stages. Possible future outcomes of the ability to detect new breast cancer cases based on two alternative scenarios show that the reduction in organized screening activities will limit the ability to detect no <3.43% of the new cases; the economic crisis will reduce voluntary screening, increasing the undetected new cases up to 11.73%. Cases diagnosed with delay will show up in their advanced stage along with unknown effects on mortality and health care costs. Global health care policies should be implemented to counterbalance these adverse effects.

Assessing Dutch Fiscal and Debt Sustainability

Although the Netherlands entered the so-called Great Lockdown with a strong fiscal position, the Dutch fiscal balance is projected to deteriorate by an unprecedented magnitude, largely as a result of necessary fiscal measures deployed to weather the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper performs a stochastic analysis of risks to Dutch fiscal and debt sustainability over the next decade, taking into account alternative recovery scenarios and associated fiscal consolidation paths and also a range of macroeconomic shocks drawn from the historical experience of the Netherlands. The simulations show that even under significant downturn scenarios and assuming an initially less favorable fiscal position due to persistent economic effects of the pandemic, risks to the Dutch fiscal and debt sustainability would remain contained.

Stock market liquidity, the great lockdown and the COVID-19 global pandemic nexus in MENA countries

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of the global coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on stock market liquidity, while taking into account the depth and tightness dimensions.Design/methodology/approachThe author used a panel data regression on stock market dataset, representing 314 listed firms operating in six Middle East and North African (MENA) countries from February to May 2020.FindingsThe regression results on the overall sample indicate that the liquidity related to the depth measure was positively correlated with the growth in the confirmed number of cases and deaths and stringency index. Moreover, the market depth was positively related to the confirmed cases of COVID-19. The results also indicate that the liquidity of small cap and big cap firms was significantly impacted by the confirmed number of cases, while the stringency index is only significant for the liquidity depth measure. Moreover, the results regarding sectors and country level analysis confirmed that COVID-19 had a significant and negative impact of stock market liquidity.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper confirms that the global coronavirus pandemic has decreased the stock market liquidity in terms of both the depth and the tightness dimensions.Originality/valueWhile most empirical papers focused on the impact of the COVID-19 global pandemic on stock market returns, this paper investigated liquidity chock at firm level in the MENA region using both tightness and depth dimensions.

Assessing the Flaws in the 1920s Compromise in the Times of the Burgeoning Digital Economy and the Great Lockdown

The COVID-19 pandemic has been described by the International Monetary Fund as the worst recession since the Great Depression. The combination of tax shortfalls, increased government spending, and the irrefutable growth in the digital economy has created a situation which means that the world arrives at the crossroads of international tax reform with a great sense of urgency. If there is political consensus, reform will be in the format proposed, or similar to, the OECD/ Inclusive Framework’s proposal (described as the 2020s compromise). In the absence of political consensus, then the world will travel down the other branch of the crossroads and we will see the introduction of a plethora of interim and unilateral domestic taxes.The existing international tax rules are widely regarded as being “not fit for purpose”. After a brief introduction of the history of the international tax framework (referred to by some as the 1920s compromise), this paper traces the development of the current OECD/Inclusive Framework proposals as international tax policymakers grapple with the vexing problem of how to tax multinationals who do business across borders, particularly those that operate using a highly digitalised business model.The 1920s compromise has, arguably, at least seven major problems including the vanishing ability to tax business profits, the failure of transfer pricing in certain circumstances, the inadequacy of residence-based taxation and competition between countries.The paper identifies and then examines the proposed multilateral consensus-driven response of the 2020s compromise to these seven major challenges to the existing international tax architecture. To what extent do they provide an answer to the most significant problems in international tax?The conclusion reached is that the most far-reaching international tax forms of the last 100 years go some significant way to addressing the challenges of the international tax framework posed by the digital economy. The effectiveness of the multilateral response may depend on the quantum of reallocated tax but the 2020s compromise does not suffer from conceptual under reach because it is much more than modest tinkering with the existing system.Rather the 2020s compromise radically tests the existing norms of international taxation and even if not wholly adopted can still form part of a future solution to the fundamental problem of international tax in the 21st century.

New Opportunities and Cautionary Insights about Decentralizing and Deglobalizing Clinical Trials During the Great Lockdown.

The 2020s began with a rare coronavirus (COVID-19) disaster, which led to a pandemic-induced recession and Great Lockdown. In response, there has been a worldwide mobilization of resources to detect, treat, and cure the virus. Some policymakers are advocating for the repatriation of globally distributed healthcare know-how. Without a cure for COVID-19, the ambiguity concerning how coronavirus-related policies will impact international business remains unclear. Through a multi-method approach, our study sheds light on two key healthcare industry trends: decentralization and deglobalization of clinical trials. We offer actionable strategies to not only mitigate these challenges, but also to take advantage of their new opportunities

Pandemic disruptions in energy and the environment

Public health measures implemented during the coronavirus pandemic have had significant global impacts on energy systems. Some changes may be ephemeral: as industries go back to work and supply chains relink once production resumes, energy use and emissions have and will continue to rebound. Some may be more durable, such as reductions in commuter and business travel and increases in teleworking. The crisis has exposed the persistent vulnerability of communities of color and those living in poverty, as well as highlighting weaknesses in just-in-time production systems and inequities of supply chains. The social and policy response to the societal impacts of the coronavirus crisis will affect energy systems and the environment in complex and dynamic ways over the long run. Strategic policy responses by nations, communities, organizations, and individuals could go a long way toward reshaping energy systems and impacts on communities and the environment. Here, we highlight themes for continued investigation and research into socioecological interactions between the Great Lockdown and pathways for recovery with a focus on energy systems and the environment.

The ‘Great Lockdown’ and its determinants

Since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, countries on the same pandemic trajectory have adopted very different lockdown strategies. Using data for over 132 countries, and employing an event-study design, this paper identifies the role of political, economic and institutional factors in explaining the differential timing and intensity of stringency measures undertaken.

Covid-19 pandemic and tail-dependency networks of financial assets

This study provides evidence on the frequency-based dependency networks of various financial assets in the tails of return distributions given the extreme price movements under the exceptional circumstance of the Covid-19 pandemic, qualified by the IMF as the Great Lockdown. Our results from the quantile cross-spectral analysis and tail-dependency networks show increases in the network density in both lower and upper joint distributions of asset returns. Particularly, we observe an asymmetric impact of the Covid-19 because the left-tail dependencies become stronger and more prevalent than the right-tail dependencies. The cross-asset tail-dependency of equity, currency and commodity also increases considerably, especially in the left-tail, implying a higher degree of tail contagion effects. Meanwhile, Bitcoin and US Treasury bonds are disconnected from both tail-dependency networks, which suggests their safe-haven characteristics.

Great Lockdown vs. Great Recession: Is This Time Different for the Labor Market?

In this paper, we use administrative data covering Mexico's formal labor market to investigate the employment effects of the Great Lockdown (GL). Our results show that the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown caused Mexico's formal sector to contract by 5% by November of 2020. By August, men's jobs started to recover, while women's jobs remain stagnant. We then document heterogeneous effects by age, income, size of the firms, and economic sector activity. The most affected economic agents during the pandemic include the youngest workers (15 to 29-years-old), oldest workers (over 60 years old), low-income earners, small-sized firms (6-50 workers), medium-sized firms (51-250 workers), workers in the construction industry, and the hospitality-focused service sectors. Finally, we test different state-level factors that may explain heterogeneity within Mexico: state-level reopenings and lockdowns, infection risk, and stimulus payments. Our findings suggest more considerable employment losses in states that experienced successive lockdowns.

A commentary on the impacts of 'Great Lockdown' and its aftermath on scaling firms: What are the implications for entrepreneurial research?

This commentary argues that scaling fast growth firms drive economic development, even in recessionary periods. While the coronavirus induced the ‘Great Lockdown’ and its aftermath poses particular challenges, we argue that the crisis presents the entrepreneurial scholarly community with an opportunity to re-orientate our research. Rather than more narratives of business success in the face of adversity, the Great Lockdown presents us with a fresh opportunity to examine how scaling is affected by context, by luck and by the porous nature of business growth. In so doing, our hope is that it will encourage our community to adopt a more proactive agenda to support policy makers and entrepreneurs.

The COVID-19 Pandemic, the Great Lockdown and Fertility Trends

The novel COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a massive uncertainty in several dimensions, leading to disruptive economic and social changes that could affect trends in fertility rates in more than 170 countries. Exploiting the variations in total fertility rates and changes in real GDP observed in recent years, as well as the economic growth projections by the Monetary Fund International, we suggest that this pandemic will accelerate downward fertility trends in several high- and middle income countries, perhaps to unprecedented levels, thus uncovering major flaws in motherhood policies and institutions. In low-income countries, the effects of the pandemic would be less. Total fertility rates in the world could be below the replacement level of 2.1 by 2040. Portugal, Spain, Greece, Finland, Italy, Ireland, and the United States could even have total fertility rates below 1. The possible patterns of fertility convergence observed in recent years could also be significantly altered. Unlike other lethal plagues in history, in which high mortality rates determined subsequent birth behaviors, we suggest that uncertainty triggered by the COVID-19 would play a central role in explaining future fertility patterns, as the economic and social consequences of the pandemic extend for several years. Given their consequences for the future population, governments should place fertility policies as part of their core concerns and strategies for recovery from the pandemic.