The economic impact of COVID-19

Warwick McKibbin and Roshen Fernando¹

Australian National University, Brookings Institution and the Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research (CEPAR); Australian National University and CEPAR

The COVID-19 outbreak was triggered in December 2019 in the city of Wuhan, which is in the Hubei province of China.

In a strongly connected and integrated world, the impacts of the disease beyond mortality (those who die) and morbidity (those who are unable to work for a period of time) has become apparent since the outbreak. Amidst the slowing down of the Chinese economy with interruptions to production, the functioning of global supply chains has been disrupted. Companies across the world, irrespective of size, that are dependent upon inputs from China have started experiencing contractions in production. Transport being limited and even restricted among countries has further slowed global economic activities. Most importantly, some panic among consumers and firms has distorted usual consumption patterns and created market anomalies. Global financial markets have also been responsive to the changes and global stock indices have plunged.

1 We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Australia Research Council Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research (CE170100005).

In McKibbin and Fernando (2020), we simulate a global economic model to explore seven scenarios regarding the spread of COVID-19. The G-cubed model is a hybrid of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models and computable general equilibrium (CGE) models which was developed by McKibbin and Wilcoxen (1999, 2013) and extended to the G20 countries by McKibbin and Triggs (2018). Using this model, we follow the approach to evaluating the economics of SARS (Lee and McKibbin 2003) and pandemic influenza (McKibbin and Sidorenko 2006) to explore a range of different scenarios for the spread of COVID-19. Given a range of epidemiological assumptions, we create a set of filters that convert the epidemiological assumptions into economic shocks to reduced labour supply in each country (mortality and morbidity), rising costs of doing business in each sector (including disruption of production networks in each country), a reduction in consumption due to shifts in consumer preferences over each good from each country (in addition to those changes generated by the model based on changes in income and prices), a rise in equity risk premia on companies in each sector in each country (based on exposure to the disease), and increases in country risk premia based on exposure to the disease as well as vulnerabilities to changing macroeconomic conditions.

Scenarios 1 to 3 (called S01, S02 and S03) assume the epidemiological events are limited to China. The economic impact on China and the spillovers to other countries

- through trade, capital flows and changes in risk premia in global financial markets

- are determined by the model. Scenarios 4 to 6 (S04, S05 and S06) are the pandemic scenarios where the epidemiological shocks occur in all countries to differing degrees. Scenarios 1 to 6 assume the shocks are temporary. Scenario 7 (called S07) is a case where a mild pandemic is expected to recur each year for the indefinite future.

Table 1 outlines the assumptions in the seven scenarios.

Table 2 shows the impact on populations in different regions under each scenario. The table shows that for even the lowest of the pandemic scenarios (S04), there are estimated to be around 15 million deaths globally. In the US, the estimate is 236,000 deaths (for comparison, in a regular influenza season in the US around 55,000 people die each year).

Tables 3 provides a summary of the overall GDP loss for each country/region under the seven scenarios. It shows the change in GDP in 2020 expressed as the percentage change from the baseline. Further detailed results can be found in McKibbin and Fernando (2020). The table illustrates the scale of the various pandemic scenarios on reducing GDP in the global economy. In the case where COVID-19 develops into a global pandemic, our results suggest that the cost in lost economic output begins to escalate into the trillions of dollars.

Table 1

Source: Table 3 in McKibbin and Fernando (2020).

Scenario assumptions

The economic impact of COVID-19 Warwick McKibbin and Roshen Fernando

Table 2 Impact on populations under each scenario

Source: Table 2 in McKibbin and Fernando (2020).

Table 3 GDP loss in 2020 (percentage deviation from baseline)

Source: Table 10 in McKibbin and Fernando (2020).

A range of policy responses is important both in the short term as well as in the coming years. In the short term, central banks and treasuries need to make sure that disrupted economies continue to function while the virus outbreak continues. In the face of real and financial stress, there is a critical role for governments. While cutting interest rates is a possible response for central banks, the shock is not simply a demand management problem but a multi-faceted crisis that will require monetary, fiscal and health policy responses. Quarantining affected people and reducing large-scale social interaction is an effective response. Wide dissemination of good hygiene practices, as outlined in Levine and McKibbin (2020), can be a low-cost and highly effective response that can reduce the extent of contagion and therefore reduce the social and economic cost.

The longer-term responses are even more important. Despite the potential loss of life and the large-scale disruption to a large number of people, many governments have been reluctant to invest sufficiently in their health care systems, let alone public health systems in less-developed countries where many infectious diseases are likely to originate. Experts have warned, and continue to warn, that zoonotic diseases will continue to pose a threat to the lives of millions of people, with potentially major disruption to an integrated world economy. The idea that any country can be an island in an integrated global economy has been proven wrong by the latest outbreak of COVID-19. Global cooperation, especially in the sphere of public health and economic development, is essential. All major countries need to participate actively. It is too late to act once the disease has taken hold in many other countries and to attempt to close borders once a pandemic has started.

References

Lee, J-W and W McKibbin (2004), “Globalization and Disease: The Case of SARS” Asian Economic Papers 3(1): 113-131.

Lee, J-W and W McKibbin (2004), “Estimating the Global Economic Costs of SARS” in S Knobler, A Mahmoud, S Lemon, A Mack,.

Levine, D I and W McKibbin (2020) “Simple steps to reduce the odds of a global catastrophe”, The Brookings Institution.

McKibbin, W and R Fernando (2020), “The Global Macroeconomic Impacts of COVID-19: Seven Scenarios”, CAMA Working paper, The Australian National University (forthcoming).

McKibbin, W and A Triggs (2018), “Modelling the G20. Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis”, Working paper 17/2018, Australian National University.

McKibbin, W and A Sidorenko (2006), “Global Macroeconomic Consequences of Pandemic Influenza”, Lowy Institute Analysis, February.

McKibbin, W and A Sidorenko (2009), “What a Flu Pandemic Could Cost the World”, Foreign Policy, April.

McKibbin, W and P Wilcoxen (1999), “The Theoretical and Empirical Structure of the G-Cubed Model”, Economic Modelling 16(1): 123-148.

McKibbin, W and P Wilcoxen (2013), “A Global Approach to Energy and the Environment: The G-cubed Model”, Handbook of CGE Modeling, North Holland, pp. 995-1068.

About the authors

Warwick McKibbin is Professor of Public Policy and Director of the Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis (CAMA) in the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University (ANU). He is also Director of Policy Engagement, and ANU Node Leader, The ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research (CEPAR); He is an ANU Public Policy Fellow; a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences; a Distinguished Public Policy Fellow of the Economic Society of Australia; a Distinguished Fellow of the Asia and Pacific Policy Society; a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C (where he is co-Director of the Climate and Energy Economics Project) and President of McKibbin Software Group Inc. Professor McKibbin was foundation Director of the ANU Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis and foundation Director of the ANU Research School of Economics. He was also a Professorial Fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy for a decade from 2003 where he was involved in its design and development. Professor McKibbin served for a decade on the Board of the Reserve Bank of Australia (the Australian equivalent of the Board of Governors of the US Federal Reserve) until July 2011. He has also served as a member of the Australian Prime Minister’s Science, Engineering and Innovation Council, and on the Australian Prime Minister’s Taskforce on Uranium Mining Processing and Nuclear Energy in Australia.

Roshen Fernando is a PhD Student in Economic Policy at the Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University.

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