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Newspaper headlines continue to highlight how the COVID-19 pandemic is still raging and the mayhem it is causing. These concerns about the pandemic have led many institutions, such as the Asian Development Bank, to issue decidedly downbeat forecasts for the world economy, thus adding to the gloom

Major crises often shake up existing policy frameworks and usher in fundamentally new ones. As the world endures the worst pandemic in modern history, massive failures in public policy and political leadership have been exposed in many countries, undermining the current order and making a big break with past policy approaches more likely.

Across the globe, lockdowns are easing and economic activity is gradually resuming. But with the pandemic likely to be with us for a long time, the world is not going to back to the old ways. Typically, deep and widespread crises such as this pandemic tend to accelerate existing trends while also setting in train new ones.

The first is that every major economy is currently in some form of lockdown, with significant parts of their economies effectively shut down. These lockdowns and shutdowns – the result of what has become known as the suppression strategy – have exacted a huge economic toll. If they are prolonged…

The coronavirus crisis continues to dominate the headlines and remains the primary driver of financial markets and the economic outlook. However, while we are all focused on the immediate issues of the rate of new infections and deaths and so on, are there other factors that we might be under-estimating which could hit markets or the economy?