Special issue: The implications of COVID ‐19 for emerging Asia

In December 2019, a series of pneumonia cases of unidentified type, later to become known as COVID-19, emerged in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province in China. By the end of January 2020, the virus had spread to Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong. From there, the virus spread around the world at high speed, and finally on March 12, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) classified the COVID-19 outbreak a worldwide pandemic. The COVID-19 health shock and the ensuing shutdown measures to contain it have plunged the global economy into the deepest recession since World War II. Understandably, the COVID-19 pandemic has attracted heightened attention from academics and policymakers alike. In autumn 2021 the situation is such that the availability of highly effective vaccines in less than a year is a cause for hope, but several significant dangers to recovery of global health and economic growth are still clear and present. New variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, have emerged. At the same time, vaccine rollouts have been slow in several advanced and emerging market countries. While economic recovery in some hard-hit countries has been swift, the effects in other countries remain clearly perceptible. Taken together, these developments raise the real possibility that the current pandemic will continue to have a significant impact on economic growth in the upcoming years. Better understanding of the Covid-19 pandemic presents deep intellectual challenges as well as opportunities for useful economic policy applications. Against this background, this special issue contains five research papers, with a focus on the macroeconomic impacts of COVID-19 on the Asian Pacific economies. Rungcharoenkitkul (2021) provides a review of the macroeconomic consequences of COVID-19 up to June 2021. The paper begins with an overview of the past epidemics and selected studies to draw lessons from past experiences for the current COVID-19 pandemic. On the impact of current pandemic, estimates suggest a median output loss of 8% in 2020. The DOI: 10.1111/1468-0106.12377