ABSTRACT

While there is no way to tell exactly what the economic damage from the global COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic will be, there is widespread agreement among economists that it will have severe negative impacts on the global economy. Early estimates predicated that, should the virus become a global pandemic, most major economies will lose at least 2.4 percent of the value their gross domestic product (GDP) over 2020, leading economists to already reduce their 2020 forecasts of global economic growth down from around 3.0 percent to 2.4 percent. To put this number in perspective, global GDP was estimated at around 86.6 trillion U.S. dollars in 2019 – meaning that just a 0.4 percent drop in economic growth amounts to almost 3.5 trillion U.S. dollars in lost economic output. However, these predictions were made prior to COVID-19 becoming a global pandemic, and before the implementation of widespread restrictions on social contact to stop the spread of the virus. Since then, global stock markets have suffered dramatic falls due to the outbreak, and the Dow Jones reported its largest-ever single day fall of almost 3,000 points on March 16, 2020 – beating its previous record of 2,300 points that was set only four days earlier.