Effects of COVID-19 on trade flows: Measuring their impact through government policy responses.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Barbero J
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8513914 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:BackgroundDuring the past two years, the COVID-19 pandemic has cost millions of lives around the globe, caused major morbidity and provoked widespread economic and social disruption. In response, governments have enacted policies to mitigate the impacts of the pandemic. This research focuses in on policies aimed at increasing access to essential health products and services by comparing them to the global rules governing trade, investment and intellectual property. We have assessed whether these rules have or could have constrained countries in responding to this and future crises. The study identifies the nature and scope of the trade-related health sector policies implemented by our sample group of countries, selected because of their systemic significance: the United States, Germany, France, China, South Africa and India. Each policy is placed into one of five broad categories covered by trade and investment rules so that we could assess their consistency with those rules.ResultsWe found, among other things, that the types of trade-related health measures were quite diverse. The high-income countries in our study were the most active in the policy space and tended to rely on subsidies-based measures while the middle-income countries relied more heavily on export and import measures. Policies directly relevant to intellectual property protection were virtually non-existent. When evaluating the implemented policies against the global trade and investment rules, we found potential constraints under five different types of rules: those governing subsidies, import and export trade barriers, investment measures, government procurement and trade-related intellectual property.ConclusionsGiven the tension between the global rules and the practices of policymaking during the pandemic, we conclude that the tension must be resolved in favor of governments making policy rather than relying on existing exceptions or pushing national governments to comply more exactly with the rules. Although the pandemic itself does not respect national borders, governance still generally occurs at the national level because national governments are often the only entities with both the legal authority and the practical ability to respond.
| S-EPMC10472676 | biostudies-literature
Project description:At the centre of the multi-dimensional impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the shortage of medical supplies in countries with weaker healthcare systems significantly reduced the effectiveness of national and international public health interventions. Using a database of test-kit trade flows and barriers, we estimate the price responsiveness of test-kit demand in a global sample of countries. These estimates allow us to investigate the degree to which import tariffs by leading producers could result in a disruption in global supply chains, price increases, and welfare loss. Simulation experiments indicate that the combination of rising demand for test kits and import dependence magnifies the impact of trade barriers on consumer welfare and this impact is more profound for developing countries.
| S-EPMC9115466 | biostudies-literature
Project description: Not available
| S-EPMC9444179 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Effective government policies may reduce uncertainty in sovereign bond markets. Can policy responses help to curb bond market volatility during the COVID-19 pandemic? To answer this, we examine data from 31 developed and emerging markets during the coronavirus outbreak in 2020. We demonstrate that government interventions substantially reduce local sovereign bond volatility. The effect is mainly driven by economic support policies; the containment and closure regulations and health system interventions play no major role.
| S-EPMC8597265 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Although COVID-19 emerged as a global shock, governments adopted non-pharmaceutical policy responses that were rather heterogeneous, depending on cultural and institutional characteristics. At the country level, the stringency of 'lockdown'-type policies should be set to achieve the best possible trade-off between economic and fatality dynamics, obviously accounting for possible cross-border influences. To allow for policy learning, I assume that the first country implementing a policy initiative that is worth emulating must either get the best possible health or the best possible economic outcome. I propose a combination of sign and magnitude restrictions, embedded in a global VAR model, to identify idiosyncratic policy shocks that spill over and influence policy responses abroad. Once policy shocks are identified, I run a comparison exercise between two model specifications, i.e. with and without policy emulation. Within a given a sample, this methodology can be used to find when and where policy lessons can be identified. I find that, among 17 developed and developing countries, few can offer lessons based on their policy initiatives, but several others might get better trade-offs through policy emulation, although in reality this outcome is not guaranteed to have occurred.
| S-EPMC8525467 | biostudies-literature
Project description:In this paper we examine two policy questions about the COVID 19 pandemic in the Philippines. These are science informed policy questions that will have to take into consideration a large degree of uncertainties in outcomes. The first question is on when to lift the Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) as informed by epidemiological modelling. The second deals on how the Philippines can respond to a future pandemic crisis. We review the Philippine government's responses and introduce the complicating scientific, social, and political contexts for both questions and address proposals for strengthening the science advisory structures. We propose a permanent science advisory body for emergencies with the widest source of expertise as needed.
| S-EPMC7299863 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Public health and safety measures (PHSM) made in response to the COVID-19 pandemic have been singular, rapid, and profuse compared to the content, speed, and volume of normal policy-making. Not only can they have a profound effect on the spread of the disease, but they may also have multitudinous secondary effects, in both the social and natural worlds. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts by numerous research groups, existing data on COVID-19 PHSM only partially captures their full geographical scale and policy scope for any significant duration of time. This paper introduces our effort to harmonize data from the eight largest such efforts for policies made before September 21, 2021 into the taxonomy developed by the CoronaNet Research Project in order to respond to the need for comprehensive, high quality COVID-19 data. In doing so, we present a comprehensive comparative analysis of existing data from different COVID-19 PHSM datasets, introduce our novel methodology for harmonizing COVID-19 PHSM data, and provide a clear-eyed assessment of the pros and cons of our efforts.
| S-EPMC10867014 | biostudies-literature
Project description:ObjectiveAs a heavily populated megacity, Shanghai faces major epidemic risks. However, Shanghai's control of COVID-19 has been successful owing to both the strict government policy and wide community participation. Here, we investigated the impact of these stakeholders and examined who played a major role across different epidemic stages.DesignWe extended the classic susceptible-exposed-infectious-recovered (SEIR) model considering the heterogeneous contact structure in four social sceneries, i.e., school, workplace, public entertainment venues, and neighborhood community, which could reflect the impact of lockdown policy and wide participation of residents happened at the community level.ResultThe simulation results showed that without lockdown policy and only with community participation, the daily new confirmed cases would gradually increase to more than 7,000 [292/1,000,000] at the end of Sep. However, without community participation and only with a lockdown policy, the daily new confirmed cases sharply decreased to 30 [1.2/1,000,000] at the end of the 1st month and remained low for several months. However, when a lockdown policy was gradually lifted, the new confirmed cases increased exponentially, eventually reaching more than 17,000 [708/1,000,000]. Therefore, a government lockdown policy was necessary for the rapid control of COVID-19 during the outbreak stage while community participation is more important in keeping the number of new confirmed cases low during the reopening stage.ConclusionGovernment lockdown policy and community participation play different roles in the control of COVID-19 at different stages of the epidemic: although the government played a leading role in setting up policies, the broader participation of community fever clinics (CFCs) and the general public were especially crucial in winning the battle against COVID-19 in the long run.
| S-EPMC9315311 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has spread around the world and requires effective control measures. Like the human-to-human transmission of the severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the distribution of COVID-19 was driven by population flow and required emergency response measures to slow down its spread and degrade the epidemic risk. The local epidemic risk of COVID-19 is a combination of emergency response measures and population flow. Because of the spatial heterogeneity, the different impacts of coupled emergency responses and population flow on the COVID-19 epidemic during the outbreak period and a control period are unclear. We examined and compared the impact of emergency response measures and population flow on China's epidemic risk after the Wuhan lockdown during the outbreak period and a control period. We found that the population flow out of Wuhan had a long-term impact on the epidemic's spread. In the outbreak period, a large population flow out of Wuhan led to nationwide migration mobility, which directly increased the epidemic in each province. Meanwhile, quick emergency responses mitigated the spread. Although low population flow to provinces far from Hubei delayed the outbreak in those provinces, relatively delayed emergency response increased the epidemic in the control period. Consequently, due to the strong transmission ability of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, no region correctly estimated the epidemic, and the relaxed emergency response raised the epidemic risks in the context of the outbreak.
| S-EPMC7735864 | biostudies-literature
Project description:We analyze whether and to what extent strategies employed by governments to fight the COVID-19 pandemic made a difference for GDP growth developments in 2020. Based on the strength and speed with which governments imposed non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) when confronted with waves of infections we distinguish between countries pursuing an elimination strategy and countries following a suppression / mitigation strategy. For a sample of 44 countries fixed effect panel regression results show that NPI changes conducted by elimination strategy countries had a less severe effect on GDP growth than NPI changes in suppression / mitigation strategy countries: strategy matters. However, this result is sensitive to the countries identified as "elimination countries" and to the sample composition. Moreover, we find that exogenous country characteristics drive the choice of strategy. At the same time our results show that countries successfully applying the elimination strategy achieved better health outcomes than their peers without having to accept lower growth.
| S-EPMC8570518 | biostudies-literature