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The focus of this brief is on the immediate steps that governments can take to ensure that emergency measures implemented to tackle the Coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis do not derail their efforts to address pressing environmental challenges and improve the environmental health and resilience of societies.

The retail sector is of paramount importance across OECD countries. It operates as a gateway to consumers from upstream sectors, accounts for almost 5% of GDP, and employs about 1 in 12 workers. COVID-19 has dramatically disrupted the sector, with the shock differing massively between brick-and-mortar versus online shops, essential versus non-essential stores, and small versus large retailers. This document lists five policy measures that countries need to take now for the benefit of firms, workers and customers to shield the retail sector from the effects of the crisis and enhance its resilience.

This brief takes stock of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on gender equality in the region and highlights gender-sensitive measures and initiatives taken by governments, the private sector and civil society to mitigate the impact of the crisis on women. It asserts that the COVID-19 crisis is a watershed moment for gender equality in the MENA region and an opportunity to rethink women’s role in the economy and society. The region’s long-term recovery will depend on its ability to fully leverage the potential of both its men and women.

On 30 January 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in the People’s Republic of China a global health emergency. Southeast Asia was one of the first regions affected due to its close geographical proximity and business travel, tourism and supply chain links to China. As of 21 April, there were 2,470,436 cases worldwide and over 31,000 cases in Southeast Asia. The number of confirmed cases are rapidly rising in Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand. Governments have announced measures to limit the spread of the virus, including the nationwide lockdowns (Malaysia, Thailand, Viet Nam and Singapore), enhanced community quarantine (Philippines) and travel restrictions for foreign visitors (Indonesia). Singapore and Viet Nam have implemented preventive and containment measures coping with the Covid-19 outbreak that include test, track and trace, which could provide guidance to other countries in the region and farther afield.

The global COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant negative impact on the economies of Central Asia. This updated policy note reports on the latest developments in the region and looks ahead to identify the key challenges likely to be faced by the region’s policy makers in the short-to medium-term. It examines five major economic challenges facing countries as they recover from the COVID-19 crisis –debt sustainability, migration, job retention, private sector fragility, and lack of connectivity –and proposes ways forward.

The impact of the Covid-19 crisis on public health in the six EU Eastern Partner (EaP) countries remains limited with 187 reported fatalities in the region as of 14 April. Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia (because of their proximity to Iran) saw the region’s first cases of Covid-19 in late February. Swift containment measures and limited intra-regional mobility have so far helped limit the spread of the virus, and the number of recorded cases remains relatively low in the South Caucasus.

This note focuses on the multi-faceted structural challenges in the Western Balkans, which have exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, and it assesses the economic impact of COVID-19 on the region, with special focus on SMEs, tourism, education, employment, digitalisation, trade, and investment. As governments combat the economic and societal consequences of the crisis, the note offers policy considerations towards the objective of building back better a better future, with more inclusive, sustainable and resilient economies.

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered necessary large scale emergency government support for businesses and industries. The design and implementation of this support is crucial in avoiding domestic and international market distortions in the medium- and long-term. This brief considers ways to ensure that short-term crisis responses do not result in unintended negative implications for competition and trade in the medium- and long-term. It highlights the competition and trade policy tools governments can use to effectively balance the needs of the COVID-19 pandemic response while ensuring that this response does not undermine efforts to maintain a level playing field, domestically and globally.

Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) governments reacted swiftly and pre-emptively to protect their citizens and contain the spread of COVID-19 in the region and its impact on the economy. However, the region struggled to contain the levels of contamination, notably due to the prevalence of the informal economy and the limitations of health infrastructure and social protection systems. On the economic front, the region was already in a weak situation at the time the pandemic hit, and now has less fiscal space than in 2008 to mitigate the deeper recession that will result from the 2020 outbreak. Focusing on the 15 countries that are a part of the Steering Group of the OECD LAC Regional Programme (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay), this note provides an update on the previous note published in May 2020. It highlights the government measures enacted to mitigate the crisis and considers long-term policy considerations towards the objective of building back a better future, with more inclusive, sustainable and resilient economies.

The rapid spread of Covid-19 has been affecting economic and social conditions in Emerging Asia. Economic growth, which was already weakening before the outbreak, is facing significant pressure and may weaken further. A sharp decline in regional economic growth is expected in 2020. The pandemic will likely affect financial markets and the banking sector, as well as weaken trade flows. Impacts on firms and the labour market are already apparent. Immediate healthcare responses and lockdown measures have been trying to curb spread of the virus. Timely policy responses in health and labour markets, combined with appropriate monetary and fiscal policies, will be critical. Further assessment of the economic implications of lockdown and curfew measures will be needed. Addressing medium-term challenges, including maximising the use of digitalisation and further strengthening regional co-operation, is also important.

Fragile contexts are beginning to be hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. Most of these countries are insufficiently prepared to cope with the spread of the disease and its consequences across the multiple dimensions of fragility. The most vulnerable have difficulty in accessing hospitals and rely on poor public services. Confinement measures are hardly applicable and the mobilisation of security actors to enforce them creates further risks. The crisis highlights social inequalities and governance issues in many contexts. While the pandemic has created new peace dynamics, most conflicts continue unabated as peacekeeping missions and humanitarian response are extremely constrained. Recovering from the crisis will require international support, but public systems such as health should not be supported in isolation as these public services are not weak in isolation. Covid-19 emphasises the need to help countries address the drivers of fragility in a holistic manner and for long-term engagement.

COVID-19 disruptions to international mobility drove a collapse in services trade. In the medium term, the OECD estimates that closing borders to passengers could increase services trade costs by an average of 12% across sectors and countries. Restoring safe cross-border mobility through internationally co-ordinated border health protocols and mutual recognition agreements is therefore crucial to a strong economic recovery.

The longer run consequences of the pandemic will partly hinge on its impact on high productivity firms, and the ongoing process of labour reallocation from low to high productivity firms. While Schumpeter (1939) proposed that recessions can accelerate this process, the nature of the COVID-19 shock coupled with a policy response that prioritised preservation (over reallocation) raises questions about whether job reallocation remained productivity-enhancing. Using novel, near-real-time data for Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, this paper shows that while labour turnover fell in response to the pandemic, job reallocation remained connected to firm productivity – that is, high productivity firms were more likely to expand and low productivity firms were more likely to contract. The pandemic coincided with a temporary strengthening of the reallocation-productivity link in Australia – but a weakening in New Zealand – which appears related to the design of job retention schemes. Finally, firms that intensively used Apps to manage their business were more resilient, even after controlling for productivity. Thus, while policy partly suppressed creative destruction, the nature of the shock – i.e. one where being online and able to operate remotely were key – favoured high productivity and tech-savvy firms, resulting in a reallocation of labour to such firms. The use of timely, novel data to investigate the allocative effects of the pandemic marks a significant advance, given that the seminal paper on productivity-enhancing reallocation during the Great Recession arrived some six years after Lehman Brothers collapsed.