Question 2: Which aspect of the economy poses the greatest risk for a slow recovery?
Answer:
Human capital (education and job experience)
Confidence level:
Confident
Comment:
Similarly the answer here depends to a large extent on how long we believe it will take for the pandemic to be contained. In a pessimistic scenario of a number of years, the effects on children of repeatedly missing school due to lock-downs and higher education offered in non traditional ways may harm human capital permanently. Unfortunately there is already abundant evidence that the pandemic has affected women and parents disproportionately, and the gender gaps seem particularly worrying.
Question 1: How quickly will the economy rebound (e.g. to the pre-pandemic trend) once the COVID-19 pandemic has been contained and absent major policy interventions?
Answer:
Recovery will be slow (5-15 years)
Confidence level:
Not confident
Comment:
To a large extent, the time to recovery depends on how quickly the pandemic gets contained, i.e. what is the starting point of recovery. The longer it takes to contain the pandemic, the more difficult it will be to revert to the old ways, and there is a clear risk that demand patterns will change permanently (e.g. large parts of tourism, entertainment or air travel could disappear if say the pandemic lasts a few years). At the moment there is substantial uncertainty about when we can expect a vaccine to become commercially available, with estimates varying from 2 to 30 years (some even say we may never have one). Additionally, a great unknown about SARS-CoV-2 is whether immunity wanes over time, as is true for many related coronavira. In Giannitsarou, Kissler and Toxvaerd (2020) we show that if immunity wanes over time the disease becomes endemic, in which case it may be hard to talk about "return to normalcy". This scenario could have detrimental effects on the economy, and could even have permanent effects on economic growth.
The CFM surveys informs the public about the views held by prominent economists based in Europe on important macroeconomic and public policy questions. Some surveys focus specifically on the UK economy (as the CFM is a UK research centre), but surveys can in principle focus on any macroeconomic question for any region. The surveys shed light on the extent to which there is agreement or disagreement among these experts. An important motivation for the survey is to give a more comprehensive overview of the beliefs held by economists and in particular to include the views of those economists whose opinions are not frequently heard in public debates.
Questions mainly focus on macroeconomic and public policy topics. Although there are some questions that focus specifically on the UK economy, the setup of the survey is much broader and considers questions related to other countries/regions and also considers questions not tied to a specific economy.
The surveys are done in collaboration with the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR).
The Economic Cost of School Closures
Question 3: To what extent will school closures increase gender inequality due to unequal gender distribution of the burden of school closures?
Question 2: To what extent will school closures increase inequality in human capital development?
Question 1:What damage will school closures have on economic growth over a 10-15 year horizon?
Will COVID-19 Cause Permanent Damage to the UK Economy?
Question 2: Which aspect of the economy poses the greatest risk for a slow recovery?
Question 1: How quickly will the economy rebound (e.g. to the pre-pandemic trend) once the COVID-19 pandemic has been contained and absent major policy interventions?
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