The Economist reckons "the probability that others could experience extreme declines in GDP in 2020—perhaps as large as 10%—grows by the day."
" A dangerous pandemic working its way across a highly integrated global economy is an unprecedented event. Still, a few historical patterns are worth noting. First, and most obviously, the duration of the economic pain depends on how much goes wrong as a result of the initial shock. Germany and Austria fared worse than other first-world-war combatants because they lost the war and their empires, and suffered state collapse and hyperinflation. If countries today can survive massive output declines without sustaining much institutional damage, that bodes well for the pace of recovery.Second, large drops in output often accompany a fracturing of global trade networks. The success with which those trade ties are restored matters for the robustness of the economic rebound. Western Europe enjoyed explosive growth in the years after the second world war, thanks in part to efforts to knit trade back together—a very different outcome from that following the first. Similarly, the world must hope that trade recovers quickly when the pandemic ebbs.
And third, it is important to get macroeconomic policy right. The global financial crisis, and the euro-area debt woes which followed, did not kill millions of people or destroy valuable infrastructure, but the sluggish recovery that followed left Europe both economically and politically vulnerable to new shocks.
Even the mildest brush with the coronavirus could prove economically destructive if governments are reluctant to provide enough stimulus. The world should be able to bounce back to growth once covid-19 is brought under control. It has only to avoid the errors of history.■"