The Day After: The Impact of COVID-19 on The Global Economy

“The worst is clearly behind us. We went to the bottom and we are climbing slowly, although I think that the rate of climbing will be fairly high in the next few months,” said Prof. Olivier Blanchard, former Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund, who heads a panel of academics advising the French government on postcrisis economic policies. Blanchard joined us at a special online event on the future of the global economy we held last week in cooperation with our partner Start-Up Nation Central.

“I do not expect the global economy to return to its 2019 levels prior to 2023,” said Prof. Jason Furman, Former Chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, presenting a less optimistic vision for the future.

“It is not inconceivable that the lower demand for labor that we are experiencing now can be translated into a lower need for labor if companies change the way they work. That would require a whole bunch of professions to either disappear or shrink. We may have excess labor not as a bug but as a feature of our economy,“ warned Prof. Eugene Kandel, Start-Up Nation Central CEO and Former Chairman of Israel’s National Economic Council.

France’s Minister of the Economy and Finance, Bruno Le Maire presented his plan for emerging from the recession, stressing: “I do not believe in a brand-new world where we wish there had been no globalization at all. However, I also believe we need to make major changes in globalization as we know it. These changes should be guided by solidarity, sovereignty, and green recovery.”

Watch the full video from the online conference “The Day After: The Impact of COVID-19 on the Global Economy”: