Covid-19

The COVID-19 pandemic and the prospect of increasingly frequent and more intense natural and man-made disasters raise important questions about the resilience of the global economy to such shocks. The 2021 edition of the WTO's World Trade Report examines why the interconnected global trading system is both vulnerable and resilient to crises, how it can help countries to be more economically resilient to shocks, and what can be done to make the system better prepared and more resilient in the future.

Transatlantic leaders seem to have come to a common conclusion: the world’s liberal democracies are facing a new systemic competition. While they support a joint strategy for dealing with their autocratic challengers by strengthening cooperation with each other, they are only at the beginning of thinking about the best way to compete where they must – and to cooperate with competitors where they can. At last year’s Munich Security Conference, world leaders discussed a world shaped by “Westlessness” – as diagnosed by the Munich Security Report 2020. Unfortunately, various developments have vindicated last year’s dire analysis. Not only did Western countries continue to exhibit a lack of joint action on crucial global issues, the past year also saw continued attacks on liberal-democratic norms in key Western countries, with the storming of the US Capitol as the most emblematic symbol of the threat to democracy. But there is hope. In the midst of a global pandemic, almost exactly one year after a divisive Munich Security Conference 2020, the speakers at the virtual MSC Special Edition on February 19, 2021, including US President Joe Biden, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron, and other world leaders all voiced their support for a new beginning in the transatlantic relationship and for revamping cooperation among liberal democracies to prevail in a new age of systemic competition. After what can be called an “autocratic decade,” liberal democracies are now willing to push back to turn the “illiberal tide.” President Biden, having declared that “America is back” and ready to lead, is stressing at every opportunity that democracies find themselves at an inflection point and need to prove that democracy is not a phase-out model but can deliver tangible benefits to the people.

The measurement of non-market output, characterised by providing goods and services without economically significant prices, has always proved challenging for compilers of the National Accounts. Various approaches are available to meet these challenges, often resulting in slight differences in methodology between countries. Government policies, introduced in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic exacerbated some of these existing differences, potentially influencing the GDP estimates across countries. This joint paper by the United Kingdom Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) explains the methodological options available to statistical compilers and explores differences in methodologies used by countries to measure non-market output, analysing their implications for international comparisons of GDP growth during the COVID-19 pandemic.

COVID-19 hit the long-term care sector hard. This brief looks at mortality rates in care homes, as well as the policy responses undertaken during the pandemic. The brief assesses the emergency preparedness of the sector and highlights the lessons learned, including policies to reduce isolation, testing strategies, care workforce and co-ordination with the health care sector.

This paper assesses the role of carbon pricing in a sustainable recovery from COVID-19. It tracks the policy changes in carbon pricing within OECD and G20 countries between January 2020 and August 2021 of the COVID-19 pandemic. Carbon pricing as defined here includes emissions trading schemes, fossil fuel support and carbon, fuel excise or aviation taxes. The paper also highlights the need for the recovery to be sustainable and discusses the advantages, limitations and uses of carbon pricing therein. In addition, it describes additional challenges to as well as increased rationale for carbon pricing in the pandemic. It provides evidence on the effects of carbon pricing on the challenges and discusses carbon pricing design elements to help overcome those challenges. The paper concludes that there were more policy changes with an expected negative impact on climate. However, it is likely that the impact of the climate-positive changes – which are broader in coverage and scope - will outweigh the climate-negative changes.

The pandemic has created an unprecedented level of uncertainty, mainly because we do not know how long it will last. This affects the economic implications. Two facts are clear: there will be a recession and budget deficits will have to soar. This note draws some implications beyond the immediate health concerns. In many ways, they challenge the architecture of the Eurozone. Either the architecture will change or the Eurozone as we know it will cease to exist. During the sovereign debt crisis from 2010 to 2015, the architecture was changed just as the Eurozone was on the verge of losing one or more members, with unmeasurable consequences. Will history repeat itself?

While media consumption has accelerated during the pandemic, the main currency used for media monetization – advertising spend – has been pulled back across many channels, due to both economic and social concerns. Recently, many brands have halted their spending on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. While the advertising revenue of such platforms is driven largely by small and medium enterprises, events of late may signal a larger shift in focus to the role that one’s business decisions play in driving societal change. For media companies with significant reach and influence over consumers, this responsibility is even more crucial. We assessed how media organizations responded to COVID-19 and addressed their societal responsibility. In this second paper, we focus on the near-term and medium-term actions that can be taken to improve the financial viability, resilience and sustainability of the industry. We focus on four key areas: Creating a stronger media ecosystem across content creation, distribution and consumption innovation. We identified five key areas to drive a stronger media ecosystem: enhanced trust and transparency, better alignment of value with investments, media pluralism, a global community of creators and viewers, and renewed consumer focus. We examined the demonetization of harmful content through initiatives such as the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, in partnership with the Forum’s “Shaping the Future of Media, Entertainment and Culture” platform. Accelerating digital transformation to drive innovation. Digital distribution is no longer a choice – companies must decide whether to build, buy or partner to increase their digital capabilities.–New digital production methods have created lower-cost and more authentic content – companies should consider how they adopt end-to-end cloud production tools to capture, edit, finalize and distribute content in a single workflow from start to finish. Notable innovation in the use of data-driven tools for revenue projections, content curation and moderation, and user experience will present new decisions for businesses. With a significant increase in cyber threats during the COVID era, businesses need to take practical steps to increase their cyber resilience. Adapting the workforce and ways of working to support the next phase of industry growth. Work has transitioned to home-office settings with varying degrees of effectiveness – businesses should consider what capabilities are needed to operate in a hybrid work model in the future. Worker profiles in demand will be in big data, analytics and revenue-related functions, as well as in security and data privacy, but the industry is unlikely to go back to pre-COVID employment levels. With heavy reliance on freelance and contract work, there is an opportunity to revisit the industry’s duty of care to its workers and reset on its representation of minorities. In addition, employers will need to find new ways to protect employees’ safety and mental health. Supporting responsible business through global sustainable development goals (SDGs) –The urgency to act as responsible media businesses has never been higher, with three-quarters of media chief executive officers recognizing the critical role1 of businesses in society and three out of five consumers claiming to avoid brands that do not demonstrate progress against the goals affecting our society and planet. Businesses should evaluate their impact in terms of environmental and social considerations and reset their activities in line with the SDGs. Responsible leadership is a critical enabler of sustainable governance. Top leaders exhibit five elements of responsible leadership: 1) stakeholder inclusion; 2) emotion and intuition; 3) mission and purpose; 4) technology and innovation; and 5) intellect and insight. At the end of this paper, we identify actions that companies can take immediately, such as reviewing their media investment strategies, employing new brand safety tools, implementing new ways to create an engaged workforce and many others. A number of the companies engaged for this report have already committed to such actions, and we encourage other companies for which these steps are relevant to carry them out within their own businesses. In the final paper of this series, we will highlight the lasting industry shifts that will result from the current crisis and the long-term plans that various parts of the media ecosystem should consider when developing their strategies.

The fable of the boiling frog provides a salutary lesson for business leaders. In this apocryphal story, a frog placed in cold water remains in the water as the temperature is gradually increased to boiling. In failing to notice the gradual but real change in its circumstances, the frog dooms itself to a catastrophic ending. Although frogs do not behave this way in real life, humans often do. Neurobiologically conditioned, as we are, to pay attention to stark contrasts and sudden changes, we often overlook slow moving changes in our environments that may herald disastrous consequences.The evolution of infectious disease risk is one such change. As this report explains, the number and diversity of infectious disease outbreaks are gradually but inexorably increasing, as is their capacity to send shocks through our global economic systems. As we travel, trade and communicate across an increasingly hyperconnected global economy, more and more companies will find themselves exposed to the effects of outbreaks that begin thousands of miles away.