Suresh Narayanan, School of Social Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia: The severe acute respiratory syndrome induced by SARS-CoV-2, now notoriously known worldwide as COVID-19, was first reported in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. According to the World Bank, as of 31 August 2020, there were 25.3 million cases reported worldwide with 844,312 deaths.
The loss of human lives and the economic damage inflicted by the COVID-19 pandemic have perhaps received unprecedented media attention. Some experts suggest that it has the potential to trigger a global recession paralleling the Great Depression. Even as international agencies have come out with global and regional forecasts for growth and employment, domestic agencies have produced estimates for their respective economies. The World Bank opined that the COVID-19 recession has seen the fastest, steepest downgrades in consensus growth projections among all global recessions since 1990 (World Bank 2020).
The paper by McKibbin and Fernando is an...