Economic impacts of COVID-19 in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia

News of a new virus started coming out of China towards the end of 2019. By mid-March 2020, the world went into varying levels of lockdown with immediate and severe economic impacts , particularly for certain sectors most reliant on person-to-person contacts such as restaurants, cafes, sporting events, non-essential retail, and travel and tourism. No country was immune to the pandemic nor its economic repercussions.

The purpose of this project is to unpack the ramifications of the global crisis in “headline numbers”, that is the impact of the pandemic and associated measures on overall GDP growth and employment through channels like reduced trade, shifting demand patterns, interruptions to international travel and productivity impacts. Underlying the "unpacking" is a global dynamic computable general equilibrium model with a focus on a number of countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.