Dialoguepk

Facing the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression 11 May 2020 Authors: Yves Tiberghien, UBC, Alan S Alexandroff, University of Toronto and Colin Bradford, Brookings Three months into the COVID-19 crisis, the world is not only facing a pandemic that keeps claiming lives, but also the greatest economic crisis since the 1930s. Growth has turned negative, unemployment keeps rising, trade is collapsing, capital flows are fleeing emerging markets, and remittances are falling. It is impossible to know if this shock to our interdependent system will fade away in a ‘V-shape’ recovery by 2021 or break critical components in the global architecture. What we do know is this: the collective actions of systemically important players and international institutions will determine whether the international system bounces back from this crisis. The field of international political economy has taught observers two key lessons over the years: the global economic system is prone to different s