On March 12th 2020, World Health Organization (WHO) declared the spreading of the new virus, 2019-nCoV, a pandemic. In Asia, the virus, more commonly referred to as COVID-19, has been spreading since the end of December. To contain the public health threat, almost all countries enforced a variety of measures, including lockdowns, to minimize face-to-face human interactions between the infected and the susceptible.While these vigilant measures save lives, they also generate a substantial negative economic shock that immediately halts demand and significantly disrupts supply, global production value chain and trade. The consequences are dire — considerable decline in output, massive surge in unemployment, countless bankruptcy cases, and unrelentless worries over financial stability. The result, a worldwide economic setback, is more severe than that experienced during the Great Financial Crisis of 2008-2009.Asia's experiences with COVID-19 precede that in the West. This fortuitous timing allows Asia to share its learnings drawn from experiences to benefit the world.The Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research's (ABFER) community has gathered a collection of insights to inform the public. Besides providing access to research on the pandemic conducted in Asia, these commentaries offer comprehensive information on the effects of the pandemic, the effectiveness of measures employed to contain it and the subsequent economic impacts from such implementation. With granular analyses of government policies and their associated economic rescue packages, these commentaries elucidate the hard trade-offs between public health protection and economic security. Finally, the commentaries address the broader impact of the pandemic on international trade, global value chains and society.

The lasting turmoil associated with the unprecedented pandemic, triggered by the novel corona virus COVID-19, has dragged the world into a mud of uncertainty. Fiscal stimulation, interest rate cuts, global supply-chain redeployment, "pandemic bond" and circuit breakers kicked in and the world is responding to this great challenge. But how can finance and economic research help the world under such circumstances? This book dwells on this new area of research and tries to understand how pandemics impact the economic and financial ecosystem of both emerging and advanced economies. Lessons learnt from the experience of previous pandemics maybe presented and discussed through drawing on policy lessons to date. By gathering research on political economy, geopolitical issues, behavioral finance, international institutional responses and medical and health issues resulting from pandemics, the chapters in this edited volume help in expanding the knowledge of social and economic consequences of the pandemic as well as set the foundation for future research. This book would benefit scholars, policy makers and entrepreneurs worldwide as a valuable archive of research on pandemics. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Emerging Markets Finance and Trade.

A engaging analysis of food production in the United States emphasizing that sustainable agricultural development is important to community health.

The Asia-Pacific region was the first to be hit by the COVID-19 pandemic; it put a strain on its people and economies, and policymaking became exceptionally difficult. This departmental paper contains the assessment of the key challenges facing Asia at this critical juncture and policy advice to the region both to address the current challenges and to build the foundations for a more sustainable and inclusive future. The paper focuses on (1) adjusting to the COVID-19 shock, (2) using unconventional policies when policy space is limited, (3) dealing with debt, and (4) helping the vulnerable and greening the recovery. The paper first presents the different ways countries are adjusting to the COVID-19 shock.