Back

Flattening Coronavirus Curves - Otaviano Canuto

April 6, 2020
Related topics: 
Economy
Health

Why every country in the world is facing a challenge of flattening coronavirus curves? Which policies to contain or at least slow the spread of coronavirus have been applied? What must be done to mitigate the recession accompanying containment policies? Is "doing-nothing" economically better?

Speakers
Otaviano Canuto
Senior Fellow
Senior Fellow at the Policy Center for the New South, principal at Center for Macroeconomics and Development and non-resident fellow at Brookings Institute. Former Vice President and Executive Director at the World Bank, Executive Director at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Vice President at the Inter-American Development Bank. He was also Deputy Minister for international affairs at Brazil’s Ministry of Finance, as well as professor of economics at University of São Paulo (USP) and University of Campinas (UNICAMP). ...

RELATED CONTENT

  • AD Talks 2020: Pandemics: Saving Human Lives or the Economy
    December 8, 2020
    COVID-19 showed how unprepared the health systems are to address major pandemics. Except for China, South Korea and Japan, countries have struggled to deal with the pandemic. Lockdowns and quarantines have been incentivised as a strategy. However, many countries have struggled economica...
  • Economy Recovery and Scars from Coronavirus
    November 24, 2020
    The global economic activity has climbed up since June but there are signs that the recovery may be losing momentum. Instead of a V, U, W, or L, a square root as a recovery shape looks more likely, as we approached before in this series. And the crisis is likely to leave deep, unequal s...
  • Don’t Expect Miracles from the Multilaterals
    Authors
    Otaviano Canuto
    September 11, 2020
    Latin American and Caribbean economies need help, but organizations like the IDB are also stretched thin. First appeared at Americas Quarterly With Latin America and the Caribbean potentially facing years of difficulties due to the pandemic and related economic crises, attention has shifted to what multilateral institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) might do to help. There’s no doubt they can play a crucial role in preventing another lost decade in the region. But ...
  • Global imbalances, coronavirus, and safe assets
    Authors
    Otaviano Canuto
    August 10, 2020
    The International Monetary Fund (IMF) released, on August 4th, its ninth annual External Sector Report, where current account imbalances and asset-liability stocks of 30 systemically large economies are approached. This time the report went beyond looking the previous year and tried to anticipate what will be some of the impacts of the still on-going COVID-19 crisis. The report shows that the global economy entered the COVID-19 crisis with a configuration of external imbalances tha ...
  • Regional economic impact of COVID-19 in Colombia: An input–output approach
    Authors
    Eduardo Amaral Haddad
    Jaime Bonet-Morón
    Diana Ricciulli-Marín
    Gerson Javier Pérez-Valbuena
    Luis Armando Galvis-Aponte
    Inácio F. Araújo
    Fernando S. Perobelli
    July 29, 2020
    The aim of this paper is to assess the regional economic impact of the lockdown measures ordered by the national government to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Using an input–output model, we estimate the economic loss of extracting groups of formal and informal workers from different economic sectors. Results show monthly economic losses that represent between 0.5% and 6.1% of national GDP, depending on the scenario considered. Accommodation and food services, real estate, administr ...
  • Can the global recovery be sustained even as the pandemic rages?
    Authors
    Uri Dadush
    July 20, 2020
    This article was originally published on Bruegel. The global economy is showing signs of recovery from the economic crisis caused by COVID-19, though the spread of the coronavirus is accelerating in some countries. In this circumstance, policymakers must weigh up the trade-offs involved in dealing with the pandemic while easing lock downs and sustaining economic activity. Differences in age structures, urbanisation rates and other factors will inform decision making in different co ...
  • The economic recovery from coronavirus may look like a square root
    Authors
    Otaviano Canuto
    July 20, 2020
    There are signs of recovery in various parts of the global economy, starting in May, after the depressive dip imposed by Covid-19. Such signs emerged after the easing of restrictions on mobility established to flatten out the pandemic curves, and also reflected policies of flattening the recession curve (income transfers to part of the population, credit lines to vulnerable companies and others). Besides remaining far from giving back the GDP lost, in all countries, the recovery fa ...
  • L’économie africaine face au Covid : enjeux et défis
    July 10, 2020
    L’Afrique fait face à une crise économique sans précédent qui ne manquerait pas de rebondir sur les équilibres économiques et sociales. Pour apaiser la violence du choc et éviter surtout l’installation permanente de ses répercussions, l’Afrique doit déployer des stratégies de ripostes i...
  • La transition économique tunisienne à l’aune de la crise sanitaire de la Covid-19
    Authors
    Abdessalam Jaldi
    June 26, 2020
    La jeune démocratie tunisienne a réussi le double pari de juguler la propagation de la pandémie de la Covid-19, tout en s’érigeant en un modèle régional de gestion de la crise sanitaire. Désormais, le pays doit remédier aux chocs économiques engendrés par la pandémie et pourrait connaitre la pire récession de son histoire. Dans cette tempête annoncée, l’accélération de la transition économique s’avère nécessaire, non seulement pour refonder le système économique, mais aussi pour pré ...
  • Cuba in the Coronavirus Crisis
    Authors
    Helmut Sorge
    June 11, 2020
    When the cruise ship the MS Braemar in March had coronavirus cases confirmed on board, it struggled to find somewhere to dock. The Americans turned it away, as did the Bahamas. But another nation, just 200 miles off the U.S. coast, accepted the desperate Braemar. Cuba allowed it to berth in Puerto Mariel, 40 kilometers west of the capital, Havana. Within a day, in cooperation with the British government, Cuban medical teams accompanied more than 680 passengers to Havana airport and ...