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ADVANCED MACROECONOMICS I Oliver Landmann Universität Basel Professor Oliver Landmann MACROECONOMICS C. The Covid-19 Pandemic and the Macroeconomy: A Primer Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg To the students of the Basel FS 2020 Macro Class: Change of Syllabus Needless to say in 2020, we live through an extraordinary period. The Covid-19 Pandemic has changed our entire way of life, not least our way of studying. We all face the necessity of huge adjustments. Your macro module adjusts by adding a chapter on macroeconomic aspects of the pandemic, in the process cutting short the remaining material that was originally listed in the Syllabus. The Pandemic is first and foremost a public health challenge. But addressing this challenge has enormous consequences for the economy – most of all macroeconomic consequences. Therefore, we are currently witnessing an outburst of research activity by macroeconomists thinking about the nature of the economic effects of the pandemic and about the best way for public policies to limit the damage. This Chapter surveys some of the insights gained so far, compiling some useful sources along the way. It will be updated as events unfold. It is to be studied just as any other regular chapter of the course: Read the required readings ( next slide), study the slides, listen to the audios on ADAM. Landmann - Macroeconomics - Extra Chapter on Covid-19 2 Outline and Required Readings 1. The Dynamics of an Epidemic 2. The Economic Fallout 3. The Economic Policy Response 4. From “Hammer” to “Dance”: How to Restart the Economy Required readings: *Richard Baldwin and Beatrice Weder di Mauro, Introduction, in R. Baldwin and B. Weder di Mauro Mitigating the COVID Economic Crisis: Act Fast and Do Whatever It Takes, 18 March 2020, pp. 1-24. *Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, Flattening the pandemic and recession curves, in R. Baldwin and B. Weder di Mauro Mitigating the COVID Economic Crisis: Act Fast and Do Whatever It Takes, 18 March 2020, pp. 31-39. *Olivier Blanchard, "Whatever it takes." Getting into the specifics of fiscal policy to fight COVID-19 Peterson Institute of International Economics, Realtime Economic Issues Watch, 30 March, 2020. *Philip Lane, The Monetary Policy Package: An Analytical Framework, The ECB Blog, 13 March 2020. Landmann - Macroeconomics - Extra Chapter on Covid-19 3 1. How a Pandemic Plays Out: The Epidemic Curve The Theoretical Model Covid-19, China 2020 The typical evolution of an epidemic follows the The empirical data deviate from ‚epi‘ curve: It starts slowly, then looks like the model of unmitigated exponential growth, passes a peak and dissemination due to the drastic gradually fizzles out thereafter. meausres of suppression taken by China. Source: R. Baldwin and B. Weder di Mauro , Source: R. Baldwin, It’s not exponential: An Mitigating the COVID Economic Crisis: Act Fast economist’s view of the epidemiological curve, and Do Whatever It Takes, 18 March 2020, p. 2. VoxEu.org, 12 March 2020. Landmann - Macroeconomics - Extra Chapter on Covid-19 4 The Problem of Limited Hospital Capacity . The model on the previous slide displays the evolution of new cases in the absence of any policy intervention. This is how most cases of mild flu play out, with at most some vaccination taking place. The case of Covid-19 is different: It is many times as infectious and it is more deadly than a run-of-the-mill flu. Hence, a large share of the population, in particular “the vulnerable risk group”, is threatened by suffering and death. Thus, containment of the epidemic becomes an urgent necessity - if only to keep the demand for intensive care from exhausting and exceeding the capacity of the health sector,. The aim of such containment is to flatten the epidmeic curve as shown on the next slide. Containment means social distancing, shutting down places of mass human contact (schools, sports events, bars, production facilities) – up to a complete lockdown of the economy. Landmann - Macroeconomics - Extra Chapter on Covid-19 5 Flattening the Curve Source: R. Baldwin, Inequality and pandemic make an explosive mix, VoxEu.org, 15 March 2020. Landmann - Macroeconomics - Extra Chapter on Covid-19 6 2. The Economic Fallout The recession caused by the pandemic is unlike the demand-shock or supply- shock recessions we know from the macro textbook: It is the simple result of closing down part of the economy. In deciding on the timing and the extent of containment measures, authorities face a short-run trade-off between containing the spread of the virus and limiting the economic fallout. Source: R. Baldwin,The supply side matters: Guns versus butter, COVID-style, VoxEu.org, 22 March 2020. Landmann - Macroeconomics - Extra Chapter on Covid-19 7 Flattening the Recession Curve . Much as public health policies are required to flatten the epidemic curve, economic policies are required to flatten the recession curve. Analytically, there is a common denominator, externalities (Gourinchas 2020): . In the health sector: Beyond the curative function of treating infected patients, containment measures are required because individuals do not have the proper incentives to practice social distancing on their own. The risk of being a carrier of the virus and infecting other people is an externality. Hence, public policy must force individuals to internalize this externality. In the economy: Firms and households are intimately linked via goods markets, factor markets and financial markets. Any initial shock to money flows is amplified as agents reduce their outlays - purchases of goods and services, employment of labor, disbursement of loans – when they experience, or just expect, their cashflow to suffer from the original health shock. Again, an externality is involved which prevents the market system to absorb the shock optimally in the absence of a public policy intervention: In your decision making, you do not internalize the fact that your decision to cut your outlays reduces someone else’s cashflow. Hence , public policy must step in, not do undo the original shock, but to prevent it from starting a cumulative cascade of contracting economic activities. Note that whereas for public health, social distancing prevents an adverse externality, for the economy, it creates an adverse externality (Gourinchas 2020)! Landmann - Macroeconomics - Extra Chapter on Covid-19 8 Flattening the Recession Curve . The red curve indicates the loss of current output caused by the epidemic in the absence of mitigating economic policy measures. This loss of output results from the epidemic itself (absences from work due to illness, loss of life) and from the containment measures taken by public health authorities (social distancing, closure of schools and establishments). The blue curve indicates the loss of current out-put if economic policy measures are taken to limit the economic damage caused by the epidemic. The loss of output expressed by the blue curve is inevitable as some parts of the economy are shut down directly for reasons of public Depth of health. recession . However, the direct disruption of economic activity spawns indirect Source: second-round effects that depress output even further (as explained Gourinchas (2020) on the next slide). These secondary effects are expressed by the difference between the blue and the red curve. Landmann - Macroeconomics - Extra Chapter on Covid-19 9 Mechanisms of Economic Contagion Numerous propagation mechanisms have the potential of amplifying the direct disruptions of economic activity caused by the public health crisis: 1. Faced with the abrupt stop of their production, firms are hard pressed to maintain wage payments. 2. The loss of wage income forces households to reduce their consumption spending, which entails another round of revenue losses for producers. 3. Corporate debt has increased significantly in the recent past and thus makes firms particularly vulnerable to any reduction of their cashflow. Debt service gets suspended, bankruptcies may set off a chain reaction among firms and banks that are tightly linked by supply chains and credit relations. Financial stability is threatened. 4. Lockdowns and closed borders disrupt local and global supply chains, which passes the damage on to sectors, both national and international, that are not directly hit by the epidemic. Adapted form Richard Baldwin, Keeping the lights on: Economic medicine for a medical shock, VoxEu.org, 13 March 2020. Landmann - Macroeconomics - Extra Chapter on Covid-19 10 A Loss of Cash Flow is Contagious, Too The diagram visualizes the well-known circular flow of income and expenditure. Each red X marks a direct impact of the epidemic and the containment measures. They can be seen to “congest” the pipes through which the flows of consumer spending, export revenues, wage payments, debt service etc. are channeled so that all subsequent Source: Richard Baldwin, Keeping the lights on: Economic medicine for a activity is stifled as well. medical shock, VoxEu.org, 13 March 2020. Economic policy interventions, while powerless to do anything about the unavoidable direct impact, should aim at “decongesting” the pipes of the circular income and expenditure flows in order to suppress the avoidable second-round effects on economic activity as much as possible. Landmann - Macroeconomics - Extra Chapter on Covid-19 11 Immediately Visible: Stillstand Note: Due to differences in the design of labor markets and the social protection of workers, what shows up as an explosion of unemploy- ment in the U.S.A. shows up as an ex- plosion of short-time work in many places in Europe (Germany, in particular). This was the peak of new unemployment claims during the Great Recession in 2009! Source: John Bluedorn, Gita Gopinath and Dmaiano Sandri, An Early View of the Economic Impact of the Pandemic in 5 Charts, IMF Blog, 06 April 2020. Landmann - Macroeconomics - Extra Chapter on Covid-19 12 The Economic Cost: Visible, but Hard to Estimate OECD estimate of potential immediate impact of widespread shutdowns Note: 1.This is the immedi- ate impact of the pandemic.
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