Recovering from Pandemic Recessions

Friday, November 20, 2020
WebEx

The Institute for International Economic Policy is pleased to invite you to the 13th annual Conference on China’s Economic Development and U.S.-China Economic Relations. This year the conference will take place as a virtual series. This conference is co-sponsored by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies and the GW Center for International Business Education and Research.

In this panel event, Dr. John Rogers, Senior Adviser at the Federal Reserve Board, and Michael Song, Professor of Economics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, will share their respective research investigating economic recessions and recoveries during modern health crises and China’s economic experience during the current pandemic.

Examining historical episodes, John Rogers’ latest work finds that during the previous modern health crises, real GDP growth fell by around three percentage points in affected countries relative to unaffected countries in the year of the outbreak. Bounce-back in GDP growth was rapid, but output was still below pre-shock level five years later. Unemployment for less educated workers was higher and exhibited more persistence, and there was significantly greater persistence in female unemployment than male. The negative effects on GDP and unemployment were felt less in countries with larger first-year responses in government spending, especially on health care. Affected countries’ consumption declined, investment dropped sharply, and international trade plummeted. Bounce-back in these expenditure categories is also rapid but not by enough to restore pre-shock trends. These estimates are viewed as a lower bound for the global economic effects of COVID-19.

Zooming in on the effect of the pandemic and lockdown policy on Chinese economy, Michael will first show his estimates on the economic impacts of COVID-19 using high-frequency, city-to-city truck flow data from China. The largest economic impacts are from COVID shocks to Wuhan and Beijing, knocking about three percentage points off the national real income. If all Chinese cities had containment policies that responded to local pandemic severity in the same way as those in Hubei did, China’s first-quarter real income would have been reduced by half. He will then use firm registration records, online sales and job posting data to show the recovery of Chinese economy and its structural patterns.

Meet the Speakers:

Picture of John RogersJohn Rogers is a Senior Adviser in the International Finance Division of the Federal Reserve Board. He received his BA from the University of Delaware and PhD in economics from the University of Virginia. John was on the economics department faculty at Penn State University, where he rose to Associate Professor in 1996. He began working on the Fed’s multi-country model in the Trade & Financial Studies section, and became section chief in 2003. John is the author of several academic publications in international finance and macroeconomics. He continues to teach those subjects as an adjunct professor in the economics department at Georgetown University. John is the father of five children.

Picture of Michael SongMichael Song is a professor at the Department of Economics, Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), an outstanding fellow of the Faculty of Social Science at CUHK, a co-director of CUHK-Tsinghua Joint Research Center for Chinese Economy and a distinguished visiting professor at the School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University. His research focuses on Chinese economy and macroeconomics. He published papers on leading academic journals including American Economic Review and Econometrica. His paper “Growing like China” won Sunyefang Economic Science Award and the Best Paper Award for Chinese Young Economists. Before joining CUHK, Prof. Song was an associate professor of economics at Chicago Booth. Prof. Song is also a co-editor of China Economic Review, an associate editor of Econometrica and Journal of European Economic Association and an academic committee member of China’s Economics Foundation.

Meet the Moderator:

Picture of Remi JedwabRémi Jedwab is an associate professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Elliott School and the Department of Economics of George Washington University and an Affiliated Scholar of the Marron Institute of Urban Management at New York University. Professor Jedwab’s main fields of research are development and growth, urban economics, labor economics and political economy. Some of the issues he has studied include urbanization and structural transformation, the relationship between population growth and economic growth, the economic effects of transportation infrastructure, and the roles of institutions, human capital and technology in development. He is the co-founder and co-organizer of the World Bank-GWU Urbanization and Poverty Reduction Conference and the Washington Area Development Economics Symposium. His research has been published in the American Economic Review, the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Economic Journal, and the Journal of Urban Economics. Finally, he is an Associate Editor at the Journal of Urban Economics and Regional Science and Urban Economics.

Chinese Translation:

乔治华盛顿大学国际经济政策研究所 (The Institute for International Economic Policy) (IIEP) 欢迎您参加中国经济发展和中美经济关系的第十三届年会。今年的研讨会将以用虚拟方式进行。这个活动是全英文的。这次会议是由Sigur亚洲研究中心和乔治华盛顿国际商业教育与研究中心共同主办的。

 

在这次小组讨论会上,美联储高级顾问Dr. John Rogers 和香港中文大学宋铮(Michael Song) 教授将分享他们各自在有关现代健康危机导致的经济衰退和复苏和中国在Covid-19疫情期间经济走向的研究成果。

 

Dr. John Rogers 最近的研究发现在先前健康危机期间,疫情爆发当年,被影响的国家的实际国内生产总值相对于未受到影响的国家跌幅达到3%。实际国内生产总值反弹很快,但五年后产量仍然比爆发年前低。受教育程度较低的工人失业率持续偏高,并且表现出更大的持久性;女性失业持久性也明显比男性高。对在疫情第一年提供大量政府资助,尤其医疗方面支出,的国家,实际国内生产总值和失业影响偏小。受到影响的国家消费,投资,和国际贸易都跌幅很大,虽然反弹迅速,但仍然不足以恢复爆发年前的趋势。此研究认为以往健康危机对经济的影响是此次COVID-19 对全球经济影响的下限。

 

专注于目前Covid-19疫情与隔离政策对中国经济的影响,宋教授的工作指出隔离对经济,包括从人口和货物流动到总产出,都带来剧烈影响。消费支出的大小和结构也有很大的调整。隔离的时间结束以后,制造业恢复迅速,而用电量,零售额和餐饮收入则表现较大跨区域异质性,服务业产出的也受到更大影响。

 

演讲者:

 

宋铮 (Michael Song)

宋铮是香港中文大学经济系的教授,社会科学院的杰出学者, 清华大学-香港中文大学中国经济联合研究中心的主任,和清华大学经济管理学院杰出访问教授。他的研究领域为中国经济和宏观经济学。宋教授的论文在顶级学术期刊,包括American Economic Review 和 Econometrica,发表。他的论文 “Growing like China” 获得孙冶方经济学奖和中国青年经济学家优秀论文奖。在加入香港中文大学之前, 宋铮曾任芝加哥大学布斯商学院经济学副教授。他的学术兼职还包括 China Economic Review 联合主编,Econometrica 和 Journal of European Economic Association 副主编, 中国经济学基金会学术委员会委员等。

 

John Rogers

John Rogers 是美联储国际金融部的高级顾问。他拥有德拉瓦大学 (University of Delaware) 的政治和经济学士学位,以及弗吉尼亚大学 (University of Virginia) 的经济学博士学位。 Dr. Rogers曾在宾夕法尼亚州立大学 (Pennsylvania State University) 经济系任教,并于1996年升任副教授。他在美联储的贸易与金融研究部门研究美联储的多国模型,并于2003年成为该部门负责人。 Dr. Rogers 是诸多国际金融和宏观经济学方面学术出版物的作者。目前Dr. Rogers 在乔治敦大学 (Georgetown University) 经济学系担任兼职教授。他也是五个小孩的爸爸。