Seven Finance & Trade Lessons from COVID-19 for Future Pandemics

IMF Working Papers, May 20, 2022

Source details

Canonical URL: Seven Finance & Trade Lessons from COVID-19 for Future Pandemics

Pandemics and epidemics pose risks to lives, societies, and economies, and their frequency is expected to increase as rising trade and increased human interaction with animals leads to the emergence of new diseases.
The COVID-19 pandemic teaches us that we can and must be better prepared, with scope for much greater global coordination to address the financing, supply-chain, and trade barriers that amplified the pandemic’s economic costs and contributed to the emergence of new variants.
This paper draws seven early lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic that could inform future policy priorities and help shape a better global response to future crises.

The paper emphasizes the need for much greater global coordination to address:
- financing barriers
- supply-chain barriers
- trade barriers
These barriers amplified the pandemic’s economic costs and contributed to the emergence of new variants.
The work synthesizes seven early lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic intended to inform future policy priorities and global crisis responses.

Strengthen global coordination to address financing, supply-chain, and trade barriers.
Improve preparedness to reduce the economic and societal costs of future pandemics.
Use the seven early lessons identified in the paper to help shape a better global response to future crises.