IDENTIFICATION OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC INFLUENCE ON COUNTRY MACROECONOMIC STABILITY

Abstract

During 2020-2021 the world community united the efforts to counteract the destructive impact of the COVID-19 pandemic not only on the life and health of the population but also on the state of country macroeconomic stability. The main task faced by the representatives of state authorities at the stage of the active development of the pandemic was the development and implementation of effective and quick tools to contain the spread of the coronavirus infection along with interventions to maintain the business and population well-being. In turn, during 2020-2021 scientists from all over the world focused their efforts on a multifaceted analysis of the causes, features and consequences of the pandemic in various spheres of life. The main goal of this study is to analyze the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the main parameters of the country macroeconomic stability and formalize the changes in patterns of this impact for a sample of European countries. The analysis was conducted for a sample of 15 European countries, including: Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine during 2015–2021. The time range of the study covers both the pre-pandemic period and pandemic period. This will make it possible to assess the margin of macroeconomic stability in the countries before the outbreak of the pandemic, to reveal the scale of its destructive influence during the active stage of the pandemic, and also to find out the key changes in the analyzed parameters of macroeconomic stability in the pandemic and pre-pandemic periods. The literature review on a certain topic conducted in the work revealed that the most relevant indicators of the state of macroeconomic stability are GDP growth, %; the level of employment of the population, calculated according to the methodology of the International Labor Organization, %; consumer price index, %; current account balance, % of GDP. To fulfill the task set within the scope of the work, several stages were implemented: 1) determination by means of statistical analysis with calculation of the average levels of the relevant indicators for the sample of countries, their chain and base growth rates of the patterns of change in the determinants of macroeconomic stability in the countries included in the sample, in the pre-pandemic and pandemic period periods; 2) performing a cluster analysis using Ward clustering and constructing dendrograms in the Stata 14.2/SE software product for a selected group of countries in 2015, 2019, 2020 and 2021; 3) determination of patterns of macroeconomic stability in 15 European countries and patterns of their change caused by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The results of the statistical and cluster analysis generally show that the COVID-19 pandemic has damaged the macroeconomic stability of the 15 European countries but the scale of the destructive impact is not the same: countries with a greater margin of strength and stability of macroeconomic indicators in the pre-pandemic period more easily passed the stage of high turbulence caused by the coronavirus pandemic, while states that were characterized by macroeconomic instability for several years before the pandemic suffered more devastating consequences in 2020-2021. According to the results of the study, it was established that the pandemic had the most detrimental effect on the state of macroeconomic stability in Croatia and Slovenia, which led to a change in patterns of the ratio of determinants of macroeconomic stability and their transition in 2021 to a worse cluster, while Slovakia even moved to a more stable cluster in 2020-2021. The obtained research results can be useful both to representatives of state authorities in the context of the formation of a post-pandemic recovery strategy, and to representatives of the academic community – for deepening scientific research in this direction.