essay on a country's economy

Reimagining the global economy: Building back better in a post-COVID-19 world

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November 17, 2020

The COVID-19 global pandemic has produced a human and economic crisis unlike any in recent memory. The global economy is experiencing its deepest recession since World War II, disrupting economic activity, travel, supply chains, and more. Governments have responded with lockdown measures and stimulus plans, but the extent of these actions has been unequal across countries. Within countries, the most vulnerable populations have been disproportionately affected, both in regard to job loss and the spread of the virus.

The implications of the crisis going forward are vast. Notwithstanding the recent announcement of vaccines, much is unknown about how the pandemic will spread in the short term and beyond, as well as what will be its lasting effects. What is clear, however, is that the time is ripe for change and policy reform. The hope is that decisionmakers can rise to the challenge in the medium term to tackle the COVID-19 virus and related challenges that the pandemic has exacerbated—be it the climate crisis, rising inequality, job insecurity, or international cooperation.

In this collection of 12 essays, leading scholars affiliated with the Global Economy and Development program at Brookings present new ideas that are forward-looking, policy-focused, and that will guide policies and shape debates in a post-COVID-19 world.

Sustainable Development Goals

Authors: Homi Kharas , John W. McArthur

Some have questioned whether the pandemic has put attaining the already ambitious 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) out of reach, and whether they should be scaled back and deprioritized. In this essay, Homi Kharas and John McArthur argue that the SDGs remain as relevant as ever and that the goals can in fact provide a handrail for recovery policy.

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Leadership at the local level

Authors: Anthony F. Pipa , Max Bouchet

The pandemic has revealed the importance of good leadership at the local level. In this essay, Anthony F. Pipa and Max Bouchet explore the role that global cities can have in driving a sustainable recovery.

Multilateralism

Authors: Kemal Derviş

Given the global nature of the pandemic,  there have been  calls for greater international cooperation. In this essay, Kemal Derviş examines the state of  multilateralism  and presents lessons of caution as its future is reimagined.

Rebooting the climate agenda

Authors: Amar Bhattacharya

Shared recognition of the   climate agenda is central to global cooperation.  In this essay, Amar Bhattacharya explores  how   international action   can  pursue  a   recovery  that produces sustainable, inclusive, and resilient growth.  

The international monetary and financial system

Authors: Brahima Sangafowa Coulibaly , Eswar Prasad

The pandemic has exposed the weaknesses in the international financial system and the need to improve the financial safety net for emerging and developing countries. In this essay, Brahima Coulibaly and Eswar Prasad make the case for an international monetary and financial system that is fit for purpose to help countries better withstand shocks like a global pandemic.

The future of global supply chains

Authors: David Dollar

International trade has slowed, and existing trade challenges, including automation, new data flows, and the rise of protectionism, could accelerate post-COVID. In this essay, David Dollar discusses these challenges, the future of global supply chains, and the implications for international trade.

The global productivity slump

Authors: Alistair Dieppe , M. Ayhan Kose

COVID-19 could further accelerate the fall in global productivity, which has been slowing since the global financial crisis. Evidence from other recent pandemics such as SARS and Ebola show their negative impact on investment growth and productivity. In this essay, Alistair Dieppe and Ayhan Kose argue that policy approaches to boost productivity must be country-specific and well-targeted.

Dislocation of labor markets

Authors: Marcela Escobari , Eduardo Levy Yeyati

Throughout the world, the health and economic costs of the pandemic have been felt harder by less well-off populations. On the jobs front, the pandemic is affecting labor markets differently across and within advanced and developing countries as low-wage, high-contact jobs are disproportionally affected. In this essay, Marcela Escobari and Eduardo Levy Yeyati explore the future of work and policies for formalizing and broadening labor protections to bolster resiliency.

Tackling the inequality pandemic

Authors: Zia Qureshi

Technology, globalization, and weakening redistribution policies are leading to rising inequality in many countries. To tackle inequality, Zia Qureshi discusses policies to better harness technology for fostering inclusive economic growth.

The human costs of the pandemic

Authors: Carol Graham

Evidence suggests that the poor have been suffering higher emotional costs during the pandemic. In this essay, Carol Graham offers a look into well-being measurement and strategies to combat the effects of the lockdowns.

The complexity of managing COVID-19

Authors: Alaka M. Basu , Kaushik Basu , Jose Maria U. Tapia

From strict lockdowns to ensuring sufficient supplies of personal protective equipment to sending students home from school, governments around the world have enacted varying measures to respond to the virus. In this essay, Alaka M. Basu, Kaushik Basu, and Jose Maria U. Tapia examine how governments in emerging markets have managed the crisis so far, as they design governance strategies that both reduce the spread of infection and avoid prohibiting economic activity.

Global education

Authors: Emiliana Vegas , Rebecca Winthrop

COVID-19 disrupted education systems everywhere and has accelerated education inequality as seen through what service governments could provide: At one point during the pandemic, 1 in 4 low-income countries was able to provide remote education, while 9 in 10 high-income countries were able to. In this essay, Emiliana Vegas and Rebecca Winthrop present an aspirational vision for transforming education systems to better serve all children.

Global Trade Sustainable Development Goals

Global Economy and Development

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May 9, 2024

Eswar Prasad, Caroline Smiltneks

April 14, 2024

Essay on the Economic Development of a Country

In this essay we will discuss about the Economic Development of a Country. After reading this essay you will learn about: 1. Economic Growth and Economic Development 2. Determinants of Economic Development 3. Obstacles or Constraints 4. Pre-Requisites or Need 5. Structural Changes.

• Essay on the Structural Changes During Economic Development

Essay # 1. Meaning of Economic Development:

Again Mrs. U.K. Hicks opined, “Economic Development deals with the problem of underdeveloped countries whereas ‘Economic Growth’ deals with the problem of developed countries. In underdeveloped countries the problems are that of initiating and accelerating development.”

According to Maddison, “the raising of income levels is generally called economic growth in rich countries and in poor ones, it is called economic development.”

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The processes of economic development should not only generate increased or enhanced means of production but it should also make room for equitable distribution of such resources. Thus by the term economic development we mean a process so as to raise the per capita output with a scope for equitable distribution.

Prof. Meier has rightly said, “We shall define economic development as the process whereby per capita income of a country increases over a long period of time.” Here the word “process” indicates long period changes related to changes in demand side as well as changes in factor supply.

Changes arising on the demand side are mostly related to consumers, tastes and preferences, distribution of income, size and composition of country’s population, and other organisational and institutional changes.

On the other hand, changes arising on the factor supply are also related to—capital accumulation, discovery of new resources, introduction of new and more efficient production techniques, increase in size of population and organisational changes. Cause and consequences of economic development are mostly determined by the time path and velocity of these aforesaid changes.

Economic development, being a dynamic concept refers to the continuous increase in production over the changing time path. Secondly, attainment of economic development indicates increase in real per capita income over time. Here the real per capita income of a country simply indicates total money income adjusted to price level changes over time, i.e.

r = y/p where r = real income; y = money income and p = price level.

Thirdly, by the term economic development we mean continuous increase in the level of real national income over longer time period, covering a period, not less than 25 to 30 years.

While explaining the distinction between economic development and economic growth, C.P Kindleberger observed, “Economic growth means more output and economic development implies both more output and changes in the technical and institutional arrangements, by which it is produced.”

As per this view, the term growth implies higher level of output as well as achievements in terms of increase in the volume of economic variables. Accordingly, Kindleberger further observed, “Growth involves focussing on height or weight, while development draws attention to the change in functional capacity.”

Although some economists have observed slight differences between economic development and economic growth but all these differences are imaginary and unreal and thus have little practical value. In this connection Prof. Arthur Lewis has rightly observed, “Most often we shall refer only to ‘Growth’ but occasionally, for the sake of variety to ‘Progress’ and ‘Development.’

Essay # 2. Determinants of Economic Development:

By economic development we mean attainment of higher level of productivity in almost all the sectors and a better level of living for the general masses. The path of economic development in an underdeveloped economy is full of hurdles or impediments.

Attaining higher level of economic development is a function of level of technology. Economic development is thus a process of raising the rate of capital formation, i.e. both physical capital and human capital.

Moreover, the task of economic development is influenced by a number of factors such as—economic, political, social, technological, natural, administrative etc. According to Prof. W.A. Lewis, there are three principal causes of economic development.

(i) Efforts to economise, either by reducing the cost of any product or by raising the yield from any given input or other resources,

(ii) Increase in knowledge and its appropriate application and

(iii) Amount of capital or other resources for land.

While analysing the determinants of economic growth, Prof. J.J. Spengler and W.W. Rostow have made sincere attempts in this regard. Prof. Spengler has listed about nineteen determinants but Rostow mentioned six propensities having much bearing on economic growth.

These propensities are:

(1) Propensity to develop fundamental services,

(2) Propensity to apply science to economic ends,

(3) Propensity to initiate technical innovations,

(4) Propensity to have material advance,

(5) Propensity to consume and

(6) Propensity to have children.

All these propensities are showing a clear-cut picture of determinants of economic growth neglecting the non-economic factors totally. Regarding the determinants of economic growth, Prof. Ragnar Nurkse observed that “Economic development has much to do with human endowments, social attitude, political conditions and historical accidents.”

Again Prof. P.T. Bauer also mentioned that, “The main determinants of economic development are aptitude, abilities, qualities, capacities and facilities.” Economic development of a country thus depends on both economic and non-economic factors.

Following are some of important economic and non-economic factors determining the pace of economic development in a country:

A. Economic Factors:

1. Population and Manpower Resources:

Population is considered as an important determinant of economic growth. In this respect population is working both as a stimulant as well as hurdles to economic growth. Firstly, population provides labour and entrepreneurship as an important factor service.

Natural resources of the country can be properly exploited with manpower resources. With proper human capital formation, increasing mobility and division of labour, manpower resources can provide useful support to economic development.

On the other hand, higher rate of growth of population increases demand for goods and services as a means of consumption leading to increasing consumption requirements, lesser balance for investment and export, lesser capital formation, adverse balance of trade, increasing demand for social and economic infrastructural facilities and higher unemployment problem.

Accordingly, higher rate of population growth can put serious hurdles on the path of economic development Moreover, growth of population at a higher rate usually eat up all the benefits of economic development leading to a slow growth of per capita income.

But it has also been argued by some modern economists that with the growing momentum of economic development, standard of living of the general masses increases which would ultimately create a better environment for the control of population growth. Moreover, Easterlin argued that population pressure may favourably affect individual motivation and this may again lead to changes in production techniques.

Thus whether growing population in a country practically retards economic growth or contributes to it that solely depends on the prevailing situation and balance of various other factors determining the growth in an economy.

2. Natural Resources and its Utilization:

Availability of natural resources and its proper utilization are considered as an important determinant of economic development. If the countries are rich in natural resources and adopted modern technology for its utilization, then they can attain higher level of development at a quicker pace. Mere possession of natural resources cannot work as a determinant of economic development.

Inspite of having huge variety of natural resources, countries of Asia and Africa could not attain a higher level of development due to lack of its proper utilization. But countries like Britain and France have modernised their agriculture in spite of shortage of land and the country like Japan has developed a solid industrial base despite its deficiency in natural resources.

Similarly, Britain has developed its industrial sector by importing some minerals and raw materials from abroad.

However, an economy having deficiency in natural resources is forced to depend on foreign country for the supply of minerals and other raw materials in order to run its industry. Thus in conclusion it can be observed that availability of natural resources and its proper utilization is still working as an important determinant of economic growth.

3. Capital Formation and Capital Accumulation:

Capital formation and capital accumulation are playing an important role in the process of economic development of the country. Here capital means the stock of physical reproducible factors required for production. The increase in the volume of capital formation leads to capital accumulation.

Thus it is quite important to raise the rate of capital formation so as to accumulate a large stock of machines, tools and equipment by the community for gearing up production.

Thus Prof. Ragnar Nurkse has rightly observed, “The meaning of capital formation is that society does not apply the whole of its current activity to the needs and desires of immediate consumption, but directs a part of it to the making of capital goods—tools and instruments, machines and transport facilities, plant and equipment.”

There are three stages in the process of capital formation, i.e.,

(a) Generation of saving,

(b) Mobilisation of savings and

(c) Raising the volume of investment.

Moreover, capital formation requires the suitable skill formation so as to utilise physical apparatus or equipment for raising the productivity level.

In an economy, capital accumulation can help to attain faster economic development in the following manner:

(a) Capital plays a diversified role in raising the volume of national output through changes in the scale or technology of production;

(b) Capital accumulation is quite essential to provide necessary tools and inputs for raising the volume of production and also to increase employment opportunities for the growing number of labour force;

(c) Increase in capital accumulation at a faster rate results increased supply of tools and machinery per worker.

Various developed countries like Japan have been able to attain higher rate of capital formation to trigger rapid economic growth. Normally, the rate of capital formation in underdeveloped countries is very poor. Therefore, they must take proper steps, viz., introduction of compulsory deposit schemes, curtailing the conspicuous consumption, putting curbs on imports of consumption goods, inflow of foreign capital etc.

In order to attain a rapid economic growth, the rate of domestic savings and investment must be raised to 20 per cent.

Naturally, in the initial period, it is not possible to step up the rate of capital formation at the required rate by domestic savings alone. Initially, to step up the rate of investment in the economy, inflow of foreign capital to some extent is important. But with the gradual growth of domestic savings in the subsequent years of development, the dependence on foreign capital must gradually be diminished.

Being a technologically backward country, India has decided to permit foreign direct investment in order to imbibe advanced technology for attaining international competitiveness under the present world trade and industrial scenario.

Rate of growth of GNP = (Savings ratio/ Capital output ratio)

4. Capital-Output Ratio:

Capital-output ratio is also considered as an important determinant of economic development in a country. By capital-output ratio we mean number of units of capital required to produce per unit of output. It also refers to productivity of capital of different sectors at a definite point of time.

But the capital output ratio in a country is also determined by stage of economic development reached and the judicial mix of investment pattern. Moreover, capital-output ratio along with national savings ratio can determine the rate of growth of national income.

This is a simplified version of Harrod-Domar Model. This equation shows that rate of growth of GNP is directly related to savings ratio and inversely related to capital-outlet ratio.

Thus to achieve a higher rate of growth of national income, the country will have to take the following two steps:

(a) to raise the rate of investment and

(b) to generate necessary forces for reducing capital-output ratio.

5. Favourable Investment Pattern:

Favourable investment pattern is an important determinant of economic development in a country. This requires proper selection of industries as per investment priorities and choice of production techniques so as to realise a low capital-output ratio and also for achieving maximum productivity.

Thus in order to attain economic development at a suitable rate, the Government of the country should make a choice of suitable investment criteria for the betterment of the economy. The suitable investment criteria should maximise the social marginal productivity and also make a balance between labour intensive and capital intensive techniques.

6. Occupational Structure:

Another determinant of economic development is the occupational structure of the working population of the country. Too much dependence on agricultural sector is not an encouraging situation for economic development.

Increasing pressure of working population on agriculture and other primary occupations must be shifted gradually to the secondary and tertiary or services sector through gradual development of these sectors.

In India, as per 1991 census, about 66.0 per cent of the total working population was absorbed in agriculture. As per World Development Report, 1983, whereas about 45 to 66 per cent of the work force of developed countries was employed in the tertiary sector but India could absorb only 18 per cent of the total work force in this sector.

The rate of economic development and the level of per capita income increase as more and more work force shift from primary sector to secondary and tertiary sector.

As A.G.B. Fisher writes, “We may say that in every progressive economy there has been a steady shift of employment and investment from the essential ‘Primary activities’,……………………..to secondary activities of all kinds and to a still greater extent into tertiary production.”

Thus to attain a high rate of economic development, inter-sectoral transfer of work force is very much necessary. The extent and pace of inter-sectoral transfer of work force depend very much on the rate of increase in productivity in the primary sector in relation to other sectors.

7. Extent of the Market:

Extent of the market is also considered as an important determinant of economic development. Expansion of the scale of production and its diversification depend very much on the size of the market prevailing in the country.

Moreover, market created in the foreign country is also working as a useful stimulant for the expansion of both primary, secondary and tertiary sector of the country leading to its economic development. Japan and England are among those countries which have successfully extended market for its product to different foreign countries.

Moreover, removal of market imperfections is also an important determinant of economic development of underdeveloped countries. Accordingly, market in those countries must be free from all sorts of imperfections retarding the economic development of the country.

Removal of market imperfections will make provision for flow of resources from less productive to more productive occupations which is very much important for the development of an underdeveloped economy.

8. Technological Advancement:

Technological advancement is considered as an important determinant of economic growth. By technological advancement we mean improved technical know-how and its broad- based applications.

It includes:

(a) Use of technological progress far economic gains,

(b) Application of applied sciences resulting in innovations and inventions and

(c) Utilisation of innovations on a large scale.

With the advancement of technology, capital goods became more productive. Accordingly, Prof. Samuelson rightly observed that “High Invention Nation” normally attains growth at a quicker pace than “High Investment Nation”.

There may be three forms of technological advancement, i.e.:

(a) Capital saving

(b) Labour saving  and

(c) Neutral.

The following conditions must be satisfied for attaining technological advancement in a country:

(a) making provision for large investments in research,

(b) ability to realise the possibilities of using scientific inventions and innovations for commercial purposes and expansion and diversification of the market for its product.

As underdeveloped countries have failed to fulfill these conditions thus their development process is neither self-sustaining nor cumulative. Thus in order to attain a higher rate of development, the underdeveloped countries should adapt only that type of technology which can suit their requirements.

Developing countries like Mexico, Brazil and India have been applying technologies developed by advanced countries as per their own conditions and requirements. Thus to attain a high level of economic development, the under-developed countries should try to achieve technological progress at a quicker pace.

9. Development Planning:

In recent years, economic planning has been playing an important role in accelerating the pace of economic development in different countries. Economic development is considered as an important strategy for building various social and economic overhead infrastructural facilities along with the development of both agricultural, industrial and services sectors in a balanced manner.

Planning is also essential for mobilisation of resources, capital formation and also to raise the volume of investment required for accelerating the pace of development. Countries like former U.S.S.R. and even U.S.A. and West Germany have achieved a rapid development through the adoption of economic planning.

10. External Factors:

The present situation in the world economy necessitates active support of external factors for sustaining a satisfactory rate of economic growth in underdeveloped economies. Moreover, domestic resources alone cannot meet the entire requirement of resources necessary for economic development.

Therefore, at certain levels, availability of foreign resources broadly determines the level of economic development in a country.

The external factors which are playing important role in sustaining the economic development include:

(a) Growing export earnings for financing increasing import bills required for development,

(b) Increasing flow of foreign capital in the form of direct foreign investment and participation in equity capital and

(c) international economic co-operation in the form of increasing flow of foreign aid from advanced countries like U.S.A., Japan etc. and also increased volume of concessional aid from international institutions like I.M.F., I.B.R.D. (World Bank) and other regional bodies on economic co-operation like ASEAN, OPEC, E.E.C. etc.

B. Non-Economic Factors:

Economic factors alone are not sufficient for determining the process of economic development in a country. In order to attain economic development proper social and political climate must be provided.

In this connection, united Nation Experts observed, “Economic Progress will not occur unless the atmosphere is favourable to it. The people of a country must desire progress and their social, economic, legal and political situations must be favourable to it.”

Emphasising the role of non-economic factors, Prof. Cairncross observed, “Development is not governed in any country by economic forces alone and the more backward the country is, the more this is true. The key to development lies in men’s minds, in the institution in which their thinking finds expression and in the play of opportunity on ideas and institution.”

Again Prof. Macord Wright writes, “The fundamental factors making economic growth are non-economic and non-materialistic in character. It is spirit itself that builds the body.” Prof. Ragnar Nurkse has further observed, “Economic development has much to do with human endowments, social attitudes, political conditions and historical accidents.”

Underdevelopment countries are facing various socio-political hurdles in the path of economic development. Thus in order to attain economic growth, raising the level of investment alone is not sufficient rather it is also equally important to gradually transform outdated social, religious and political institution which put hindrances in the path of economic progress.

Thus following are some of the important non-economic factors determining the pace of economic development in a country:

a. Urge for Development: 

It is the mental urge for development of the people in general that is playing an important determinant for initiating and accelerating the process of economic development. In order to attain economic progress, people must be ready to bear both the sufferings and convenience. Experimental outlook, necessary for economic development must grow with the spread of education.

b. Spread of Education:

Economic progress is very much associated with the spread of education. Prof. Krause has observed that, “Education brings revolutions in ideas for economic progress.” Education provides stimulus to economic growth as it teaches honesty, patriotism and adventure. Thus education is working as an engine for economic development.

In this connection, Prof. H.W. Singer has rightly observed, “Investment in education is not only highly productive but also yields increasing returns. So, education plays pioneer role for the creation of human capital and social progress which in turn determines the progress of the country.”

c. Changes in Social and Institutional Factors:

Conservative and rigid social and institutional set up like joint family system, caste system, traditional values of life, irrational behaviour etc. put severe obstacle on the path of economic development and also retards its pace.

Thus to bring social and institutional change as per changing environment and to realise the modern values of life are very much important for accelerating the pace of economic development in a country.

Prof. Meier and Baldwin have observed that, “Not only must economic organisation be transformed but social organisation must also be modified so that basic complex of values and motivation may be more favourable for economic change and cultural change.”

d. Proper Maintenance of Law and Order:

Maintenance of law and order in a proper manner also helps the country to attain economic development at a quicker pace. Stability, peace, protection from external aggression and legal protection generally raises morality, initiative and entrepreneurship.

Formulation of proper monetary and fiscal policy by an efficient government can provide necessary climate for increased investment and also can stimulate capital formation in the country.

Thus in order to accelerate the pace of economic development the government must make necessary arrangement for the maintenance of law and order, defence, justice, security in enjoyment in property, testamentary rights, assurance to continue business covenants and contracts, provision for standard weights and measures, currency and formulation of appropriate monetary and fiscal policies of the country.

But the economy of underdeveloped countries is now facing serious threat from large scale disorder, terrorism, disturbances in the international border etc. All these have led to diversion of resources and initiatives from developmental to non-developmental ends.

Moreover, under such a chaotic situation, capital formation process, business initiatives and enterprise of private firms are seriously suffered and distorted leading to a stagnation of economy in these countries.

In this connection, Prof. Arthur Lewis has rightly stated, “No country has made progress without positive stimulus from intelligent government.” Thus to attain economic development at a quicker pace, proper maintenance of law and order and stability are very important.

e. Administrative Efficiency:

Economic development of a country also demands existence of a strong, honest, efficient and competent administrative machinery for the successful implementation of government policies and programmes for development. The existence of a weak corrupt and inefficient administrative machinery leads the country into chaos and disorder.

Prof. Lewis has rightly observed, “The behaviour of the government plays an important role in stimulating or discouraging economic activity.” Therefore, maintenance of proper administrative set up is a determinant of economic development of a country.

Essay # 3. Obstacles or Constraints on Economic Development:

The development process of an underdeveloped or developing economy is not an easy task rather it is a complicated one as these countries are not having any common characteristics. Thus the underdeveloped or developing countries are facing several constraints or obstacles to its path n economic development.

These Constraints on the path of economic development are of two types:

(a) Short-term constraints and

(b) long-term constraints.

These short-term constraints are related to over concentration and stagnation in agricultural sector, unemployment and under-employment, low productivity of capital, the growing deficit in its balance of payment position etc. Again, the long-term constraints include infrastructural bottlenecks, financial constraints etc.

The following are some of the important obstacles or constraints on the path of economic development of underdeveloped countries:

(i) Colonial Exploitation:

In the initial part of their development process, most of the underdeveloped countries were under foreign domination which had led to the huge colonial exploitation by the foreign rulers.

Foreign rulers converted these economies as primary producing countries engaged in the production of raw materials only to be supplied to the ruler country at cheaper prices and also a potent market for the sale of the manufacturing products produced by the ruler country.

Foreign capitalists mostly invested their capital on mining, oil drilling and plantation industries where they exploited the domestic workers to the maximum extent and remitted their profit to their parent country.

They have also destroyed the cottage and small industries by adopting unfair competition which has put a huge pressure on agriculture, disguised unemployment and poverty. After independence, these underdeveloped countries like India had to face serious obstacles to break this deep rooted impasse of low level equilibrium traps.

(ii) Market Imperfections:

Market imperfections in the form of immobility of factors, price rigidity, ignorance of market conditions, rigid social structure etc. have resulted serious obstacles in the path of economic development of underdeveloped countries. All these imperfections have resulted low level of output and low rate of productivity per worker.

Due to these market imperfections, resources of these countries mostly remain either unutilised or under­utilised leading to factor disequilibrium. This has forced the gross output of these countries for less than the potential output. Fig. 1.1 will clarify the situation.

Suppose the country is producing only two commodities A and B. The production possibility curve AB represents the production frontier which shows the various combinations of commodity A and B that may be produced by the country to its maximum extent through its fuller and best possible allocation of resources.

Thus AB represents the potential production curve. But the actual production curve of the underdeveloped country denoted by AB lies much below the potential production curve AB due to market imperfections resulting in misallocation and under-utilisation of resources in the country.

Thus due to market imperfections, the underdeveloped countries fail to reach the optimum production function due to lack of optimum allocation of resources.

(iii) Poor Rate of Savings and Investment:

Another important obstacle or constraint faced by the underdeveloped countries in their path of economic development is its poor rate of savings and investment. Inspite of their best attempt, the rate of savings of these underdeveloped countries remained very low, varying between 5 to 9 per cent only of their national income as compared to that of 15 to 22 per cent in the developed countries.

Under such a situation, the rate of investment in these countries is very low leading to low level of capital formation and low level of income.

(iv) Vicious Circle of Poverty:

Vicious circle of poverty is considered as one of the major constraints or obstacles to the path of economic development of the underdeveloped countries. Vicious circle in the underdeveloped countries represented by low productivity is resulted from capital deficiency, market imperfections, economic backwardness and poor development.

This vicious circle operates not only on demand side but also on supply side.

Low productivity results in low level of income and low rate of savings leading to low rate of investment, which is again responsible for low rate of productivity. Thus the vicious circle of poverty is resulted from various vicious circles related to demand side and supply side of capital. These vicious circles of poverty are mutually aggravating and it is really difficult to break such circles.

(v) Demonstration Effect:

Demonstration effect on consumption level works as another major obstacles or constraints on the path of economic development of underdeveloped countries as it increases propensity to consume and thereby reduces the rate of savings and investment.

Here the consumption level of individual is very much influenced by the standard of living or consumption habits of his neighbours, friends and relatives but not by its income alone.

Ragnar Nurkse has termed it ‘International Demonstration Effect’. He observed, “When people come into contact with superior goods or superior patterns of consumption, with new articles or new ways of meeting old wants, they are apt to feel after a while certain restlessness and dissatisfaction. Their knowledge is extended, their imagination is stimulated, new desires are aroused, the propensity to consume is shifted upward.”

Thus this international demonstration effect reduces the savings potential of the underdeveloped countries and thereby creates severe constraints on the path of their growth process.

(vi) Unsuitability in Adopting Modern Technology:

Underdeveloped countries are facing peculiar problem in respect of adopting modern and latest technology. Due to abundant labour supply and scarcity of capital, such technologies become unsuitable for these countries.

At the same time the existing poor technology of these underdeveloped countries fails to raise the rate of productivity and also to bring them out of the vicious circle of poverty and thereby makes it uncompetitive.

(vii) Rapidly Growing Population:

Most of the underdeveloped countries are facing the problem of rapidly growing population which hinders its path of economic development. In most of the over-populated countries of Asia and Africa, the rate of growth of population varies between 2 to 3 per cent which adversely affects their rate of economic growth and it is considered as the greatest obstacles to their path of economic development.

Jacob Viner has rightly observed, “Population increase hovers like a menacing cloud over all poor countries.”

Rapidly growing population slows down the rate and process of capital formation. Growing population increases the volume of consumption expenditure and thereby fails to increase the rate of savings and investment, so important for attaining higher level of economic growth.

Jacob Viner stated in this connection, “Population growth in a backward country does not induce capital widening investment or innovation. Instead it diminishes the rate of accumulation, raises costs in extractive industries, increases the amount of disguised unemployment and in large parts simply diverts capital to maintaining children who die before reaching a productive age. In short, resources go to the formation of population not capital.”

Moreover, rapidly rising population necessitates a higher rate of investment to maintain old standard of living and per capita income. Growing population also results food problem, unemployment problem which forced the country to divert its scarce resources to meet such crisis.

Thus, over-population results poverty, inefficiency, poor quality of population, lower productivity, low per capita income, unemployment and under-employment and finally leads the country toward under development.

(viii) Inefficient Agricultural Sector:

Another important obstacles or constraints to the path of development of underdeveloped countries are its inefficient agricultural structure. Agriculture dominates the economy of most of the underdeveloped countries like India as it is contributing the major share of their GDP.

Agricultural sector in these countries are suffering from primitive agricultural practices, lack of adequate inputs like fertilisers, HYV seeds and irrigation facilities, uneconomic holdings, defective land tenure and excessive dependence on agriculture.

Under such a poor structure, the agricultural productivity in these countries is very poor. Thus this poor performance of agricultural sector is another major obstacle in the path of economic development of these underdeveloped countries.

(ix) Inefficient Human Resources:

Inefficient and underdeveloped human resources are also considered another major obstacle towards economic development of underdeveloped countries. These countries suffer from surplus labour force but shortage of critical skills. Due to lack of adequate number of trained and skilled personnel, the production system remains thoroughly backward.

Thus this dearth of critical skills and knowledge in these countries has resulted under-utilisation and mis-utilisation of physical capital leading to lower productivity and higher cost structure of the production system. Due to lack of adoption of modern technique in agriculture, industry and trade, these underdeveloped countries fail to stand in the competition with developed countries.

(x) Shortage of Entrepreneurial Ability, Modern Enterprise and Innovation:

Underdeveloped countries are also suffering from lack of adequate number of entrepreneurial ability. Naturally there is absence of modern enterprise and proper managerial talent, Due to poor socio-cultural climate and weak environment, the managerial talent in these countries fails to reach its desirable level.

Moreover, due to the lack of spirit of experimentation and proper Research and Development (R&D) facilities, these underdeveloped countries fail to transform their production system to the desired level.

(xi) Inadequate Infrastructural Facilities:

Underdeveloped countries like India are facing serious obstacles due to inadequate infrastructural facilities. Thus the underdeveloped countries are suffering from lack of adequate transportation and communication facilities, shortage of power supply, inadequate banking and financial facilities and other social overheads which are considered very important for attaining economic development.

(xii) Adverse International Forces:

Certain adverse international forces are operating against the under­developed countries which are always going against the interest of the underdeveloped countries. International trade has forced the underdeveloped countries to become primary producing countries where the terms of trade as well as the gains from trade have always gone against these underdeveloped countries.

Prof. Raul Prebisch, Singer, Myrdal have formulated it “Theory of exploitation of poor countries”.

In this connection they observed, “During the last 150 years or so, the working of international forces through the media of trade and capital movement.” produced backwash effects on underdeveloped economies. There were certain disequalising forces operating in the world economy which made the gains from trade go mainly to developed countries.

(xiii) Political Instability:

Most of the underdeveloped countries are facing the problem of political instability resulting from frequent change of government, threats of external aggression and disturbed internal law and order conditions. This type of political instability creates uncertainty about its future steps and adversely affects the economic decisions of these underdeveloped countries relating to its investment.

Due to such uncertainty, flight of capital in considerable proportion takes place from these countries to advanced countries and also retards the chances of flow of foreign capital to these countries through foreign direct investment.

Moreover, weak and corrupt public administration in these countries has been resulting a huge leakage of public fund meant for investment in developmental activities.

(xiv) Inappropriate Social Structure:

Underdeveloped countries are suffering from backward social factors. Inappropriate social forces impeding the economic development of underdeveloped countries like India include prevalence of caste system, creating divergence between aptitudes, joint family system, peculiar law of inheritance, outdated religious beliefs, irrational attitudes towards number of children in a family etc.

All these social forces are obstructing the path of development of these underdeveloped countries.

Thus all these economic, political and social factors are equally responsible for the poor socio-economic set up of these underdeveloped countries and put serious obstacles for the path of economic development of these countries.

Essay # 4. Pre-Requisites or Need for Economic Development:

underdeveloped countries are very much concerned about their attainment of economic development. Attainment of economic development necessities a suitable environment for initiating, maintaining and accelerating the pace of economic development.

Prof. Lewis, in this connection, rightly observed, “The proximate causes of economic growth are: the effort to economise, the increase of knowledge or its application in production and increasing the amount of capital or other resources per head. these three causes, through clearly distinguishable conceptually are usually found together.”

Attainment of economic development in a country is very much related to social attitudes, political conditions, human resources, and also very much depending on psychological, social culture and political requirements of the country itself.

Prof. A.K. Cairncross has rightly observed that economic development “ is not just a matter of having plenty of money nor is it purely an economic phenomenon. It embraces all aspects of social behaviour, the establishment of law and order, scrupulousness in business dealing, including dealings with the revenue authorities, relationship between the family literacy, familiarity with mechanical gadgets and so on.”

Economic development of a country does not simply require removal of some of its basic obstacles like market imperfections, capital shortage, various circle of poverty etc. but it also requires a special attempt to identify some basic  forces related to economic development. Following are some of the important pre-requisites for economic development of underdeveloped countries.

(i) Peoples’ Desire for Economic Progress:

Peoples’ desire for the attainment of economic progress is the most important requirement of economic development. In order to attain a self-generating growth of the economy, the people of the country must have a strong and positive willingness to attain such development. In order to arouse such peoples’ desire, people of the country must be certain and well assured about the achievement of economic development:

(ii) Economic Organisation:

If the development strategy of the country is to be efficacious then it should be preceded by a proper economic organisation promoting such development and not hindering it any way. The economic organisation of the country should be of that type which can respond well to the requirements of planning for economic development.

A proper balance between the private and public sector initiatives is considered very important for evolving such an effective economic organisation. Thus in order to achieve fast economic progress, an underdeveloped country must attempt to introduce a rational reorganisation of its entire economy.

(iii) Removing Market Imperfections:

Removal of market imperfections is considered a very important pre-requisities for economic development as such imperfections create a lot of obstacles in the path of economic development of underdeveloped countries.

Market imperfection is largely responsible for wide spread poverty in such economies. Moreover, market imperfections results factor immobility, under-utilisation of resources and thereby abstract sectoral expansion and the process of development.

Removal of market imperfections can accelerate the pace of capital formation and can also widen the scope of capital and money market in these countries. The country should arrange cheap and larger volume of credit facilities readily available for its industrialists, cultivators, businessmen, small traders and new entrepreneurs.

Knowledge of these investors about market opportunities and new techniques of production should also be enhanced to the reasonable level. A whole hearted effort should be made to utilise its available limited resources in a most efficient and dynamic manner to its maximum extent.

In this connection, Prof. Schultz has rightly observed, “To achieve economic growth of major importance in such countries, it is necessary to allocate effort and capital to do three things: increase the quantity of reproducible goods, improve the quality of the people as productive agents and raise the level of productive arts.”

Thus the removal of market imperfections leads to an efficient allocation of resources which finally leads to advancement of industrial and agricultural production and also to expansion of foreign trade resulting an successful effort to break the vicious circle of poverty.

(iv) Reasonable Equality of Income:

Another pre-requisite for economic development of an under­developed country is the attainment of reasonable equality of income. Because this will generate adequate enthusiasm among, the general masses toward economic development of the country as well as for the successful working of the economic plan.

Growing concentration of income and wealth in the hands of few and political influence generally protects the richer section from higher rates of taxation and thereby the tax burden ultimately falls much on the middle class and poorer sections of the society.

Underdeveloped countries like India usually face this type of problem. Therefore, it is quite necessary mat proper steps be taken to check such concentration of wealth and they should attain reasonable equality in the distribution of income and wealth.

(v) Attaining Administrative Efficiency:

Existence of a stable strong, efficient and honest government machinery is considered another pre-requisite for economic development. In order to formulate and implement economic planning along with a specific policy for economic growth, the government must be strong and efficient one, capable of maintaining internal law and order and defending the country against any external aggression.

(vi) Indigenous Base:

The development process of underdeveloped countries must have a domestic or indigenous base and it is considered another major prerequisite for economic development. Whatever initiative is to be taken for the economic development, that should come from within the economy of these under­developed countries but not from outside.

Plan for economic progress and social betterment cannot be initiated from outside of a country. Some developmental projects may be developed out of foreign aid but it should be maintained, with indigenous motivation.

But too much dependence on external capital and external forces may dampen the spirit and initiative for development and paves the way for exploitation of natural resources of the underdeveloped countries by foreign investors. Thus to attain indigenous base in developmental framework is considered as an important pre-requisite for economic development.

(vii) Capital Formation:

In order to attain economic development in an underdeveloped economy, capital formation is considered as an important pre-requisite for development. In these countries, the rate of savings is low due to low per capita income and higher marginal propensity to consume. Thus immediate steps be taken to raise the rate of capital formation of the country.

These require:

(a) An increase in the volume of real savings,

(b) Establishment of proper credit and financial institutions for mobilising and channelising these savings into investible fund and

(c) Utilisation of these savings for the purpose of investment in capital goods.

Prof. Lewis has rightly observed, “No nation is so poor that it could not save 12 per cent of its national income if it wanted to, poverty has never prevented nations from launching upon wars or from wasting their substance in other ways.”

(viii) Determining suitable Investment Criterion:

To determine suitable investment criteria is also another major pre-requisite for economic development of underdeveloped countries. Here the idea is not only to determine the rate of investment but also the composition of investment. In order to determine an optimum investment pattern, it is essential to consider various fruitful avenues of investment available in these countries.

As social marginal productivity of investment differs thus investment should be made in those directions where its social marginal productivity is the highest.

The attainment of such higher social marginal productivity of investment requires—minimising the capital-output ratio, promoting greater external economies, investment in labour-intensive projects, use of domestic raw materials, reducing pressure on balance of payments and improving the pattern of distribution of income and wealth so as to reduce the gap between the rich and poor.

Moreover, investment in these countries should be channelised to build adequate social and economic overheads. Again the investment should be made to attain a balanced growth of different sectors of the economy. Finally, considering the structural environment in the country, proper choice of techniques be made for various investment projects of the country.

(ix) Absorption of Capital:

Another pre-requisite for economic development is to raise the capital absorption capacity of underdeveloped countries as they mostly suffer from lack of such capacity due to non-availability of co-operant factors. Such problems of low capital absorption capacity arise due to lack of technology, shortage of skilled personnel and poor geographical mobility of labour.

Thus with the increase in capital accumulation in such countries, the supply of other co-operant factors should be increased so as to enhance the capital absorption capacity of such countries.

(x) Maintaining Stability:

Underdeveloped countries are facing a peculiar problem of instability arising due to inflationary rise in price level. Inflation in these countries is influenced by the factors like monetary expansion, deficit financing, misdirection of savings in unproductive speculative activities, market imperfection: etc.

Therefore, another requirement of economic development is to maintain stability by avoiding inflationary rise in the price level so as to check mis-allocation of resources along with its other evils.

(xi) People’s Participation and Co-Operation:

Finally, people’s participation and public co-operation in all developmental projects are considered as an important pre-requisite and a principal force behind all planned developmental schemes of the under-developed countries. In the absence of public co-operation and participation, this development strategy cannot function properly.

Prof. W.A. Lewis observed, “Popular enthusiasm is both the lubricating oil of planning and the petrol of economic development—a dynamic force that makes all things possible.”

Therefore, planners should make an endeavour to enlist public co-operation and to arouse popular enthusiasm for implementing their plan for development. Moreover, in order to implement any developmental projects to the fullest extent and also to restrict the leakages involved in it, peoples’ participation and public co-operation are considered very important, especially in these under-developed countries.

Essay # 5. Structural Changes during Economic Development:

Attaining structural changes in the economy is considered as one of the pre-conditions for economic development.in most of the developed countries, economic growth is characterised by structural transformations of the economy.

The process of growth is connected with both fuller use of existing resources and expanding resources. Here the problem has to be tackled in two ways. Firstly, the productive opportunities available within the existing resouirce and necessary known-how have to be utilised to the maximum extent through optimum allocation of the resources of the country.

Secondly, the production frontier, i.e., the various productive sectors, has to be widened through sizable changes to the maximum extent.

Again the Chances of achieving higher rate of development through better allocation of existing resources is very much limited. T.W. Schultz has aptly observed, “in most poor countries there is not much economic growth to be had by merely taking up whatever slack may exist in the way of the available resources being utilised.” Therefore, in order to provide all outward push to the production frontier, the productive has to be expanded.

Moreover, the structural transformation of the economy indicates a shift away from agriculture to non-agriculture activities and from industry to services along with a change in the scale of productive units, and necessary shift from personal enterprises to impersonal organization of economic firms along with a change in the occupational status of labour. 

Following are some of the important structural changes arising out of economic development:

(i) Shift in Economic Activities:

In most of the underdeveloped agricultural countries, the structural change may be initiated through reduction in proportion of population engaged in agriculture and thereby increase in the number of persons engaged in non-agricultural occupations.

H.W. Singer observed that, “The speed or rate of economic development may then be described by the rate of which 70 : 30 ratio in economic structure is approximated to the 20 : 80 ratio which represents ultimate equilibrium at a high level of development.”

Therefore, the transfer of population from agricultural sector to non-agricultural sector must be supported by an increase in agricultural production so as to provide necessary food and raw materials to the non-agricultural sector as well as to meet the requirement of increasing population in both of these sectors.

In order to meet such requirement, there should be sufficient transformation in the agricultural sector in the form of introduction of land reform measures, raising the supply of productive inputs or factors in agriculture, promoting new credit institutions, introducing dynamic market structure, providing additional incentives, arranging changes in socio-economic relationships, introducing intensive cultivation process.

The development experience in various countries shows that the share of agricultural sector in GDP of all developing countries has declined excepting Australia. In respect of changes in the contribution of services sector, the result is not so marked or consistent among the various countries.

(ii) Changes in Sectoral Distribution of Labour Force:

Movements in structural transformations in economic growth can also be analysed in the form of changes in the distribution of labour force among three major sectors. The share of total labour force engaged in industrial sector varied between 40 to 58 per cent for almost all the countries excepting erstwhile USSR and Japan, as these countries entered lately in the field of industrialisation.

On the other hand, the share of total labour force engaged in the services sector remained almost constant and relatively poor in the countries like Australia, Great Britain, Sweden and Belgium. But the same share recorded an absolute and relative increase in the countries like USA, Canada, Italy, Japan, Switzerland and erstwhile USSR.

(iii) Changes in Sectoral Share in GDP:

Prof. Simon Kuznets has rightly observed that during the period of modern economic growth, the share of agriculture and agro-based industries in aggregate output (GDP) has recorded a sharp decline, while the shares of manufacturing industries, public utilities and certain service groups like professional, government etc. have recorded a manifold increase.

Such changes have resulted corresponding shifts in the sectoral allocation of labour force of the country. Moreover, the rapid change in the size and form of business organisations has also resulted a major structural change in the economy. Modern economic growth has resulted a fall in the domination of sole trading small farms.

Moreover, the shift away from agriculture to non-agricultural activities has also resulted a significant fall in the share of small business units. Again, the modern economic growth has also paved the way for the emergence of joint stock companies and giant corporations in modern industrial set-up.

(iv) Changes in Social Structure:

Finally, social system has much impact on the economic phenomenon of the country. Social institutions, habits and attitudes are influencing the productive activities and expenditure patterns substantially, especially in the underdeveloped countries. Savings and investment patterns are considerably influenced by cultural and social considerations.

Therefore, in order to attain structural change in the economy, there is the necessity of change in the social structure of its society. Setting a dynamic economy in a static social set up is almost impossible as they cannot pull together.

In this connection, Meir and Baldwin aptly observed, “New wants, new motivations, new ways of production, new institutions are to be created if national income is to rise more rapidly. Where there are religious obstacles to modern economic progress, the religion may have to be taken less seriously or its character altered.”

Thus necessary change in the social structure is very important for attaining economic development in a country. Prof. Gadgil also observed,

“All attitudes, habits of mind, patterns of behaviour, are born out of chiefly historical institutional modes of living. These modes of living in most under-developed countries have had in the past little direct connection with economic development. If now rapid economic development is to become the main objective of these societies, their attitudes and habits of mind must change correspondingly.”

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• Essay on the Role of Banks in Economic Development

What is economic growth? And why is it so important?

The goods and services that we all need are not just there – they need to be produced – and growth means that their quality and quantity increase..

Good health, a place to live, access to education, nutrition, social connections, respect, peace, human rights, a healthy environment, and happiness. These are just some of the many aspects we care about in our lives.

At the heart of many of these aspects that we care about are needs for which we require particular goods and services . Think of those that are needed for the goals on the list above – the health services from nurses and doctors, the home you live in, or the teachers who provide education.

Poverty, prosperity, and growth are often measured in monetary terms, most commonly as people’s income. But while monetary measures have some important advantages, they have the big disadvantage that they are abstract. In the worst case, monetary measures – like GDP per capita – are so abstract that we forget what they are actually about: people’s access to goods and services.

The point of this text is to show why economic growth is important and how the abstract monetary measures tell us about the reality of people’s material living conditions around the world and throughout history:

• In the first part, I want to explain what economic growth is and why it is so difficult to measure.
• In the second part, I will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of several measures of growth, and you will find the latest data on several of these measures so that we can see what they tell us about how people’s material living conditions have changed.

What are these goods and services that I’m talking about?

Have a look around yourself right now. Many of the things you see are products that were produced by someone so that you can use them: the trousers you are wearing, the device you are reading this on, the electricity that powers it, the furniture around you, the toilet that is nearby, the sewage system it is connected to, the bus or car or bicycle you took to get where you are, the food you had this morning, the medications you will receive when you get sick, every window in your home, every shirt in your wardrobe, and every book on your shelf.

At some point in the past, many of these products were not available. The majority did not have access to the most basic goods and services they needed. A recent study on the history of global poverty estimates that just two centuries ago, roughly three-quarters of the world "could not afford a tiny space to live, food that would not induce malnutrition, and some minimum heating capacity.” 1

Let’s look at the history of the last item on that list above, books.

A few centuries ago, the only way to produce a book was for a scribe to copy it word-for-word by hand. Book production was a slow process; it took a scribe about eight months of daily work to produce a single copy of the Bible. 2

It was so laborious that only very few books were produced. The chart shows the estimates of historians. 3

But then, in the 15th century, the goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg combined the idea of movable letters with the mechanism that he knew from the wine presses in his hometown. He developed the printing press. Gutenberg developed a new production technology, and it changed things dramatically. Instead of spending months to produce one book, a worker was now able to produce several books a day.

As the printing press spread across Europe, book production soared. Books, which were previously only available to a tiny elite, became available to more and more people.

This is one example of how growth is possible and what economic growth is : an increase in the production of goods and services that people produce for each other.

A list of goods and services that people produce for each other

Before we get to a more detailed definition of economic growth, it’s helpful to remind ourselves of the astonishingly wide range of goods and services that people produce. I think this is helpful because measures of economic output can easily become abstract. This abstraction means we easily lose the mental connection to the goods and services such measures actually talk about.

This list of goods and services isn’t meant as a definitive list, but it helped me to think about the relevance of poverty and growth: 4

At home: Light in your home at night; the sewage system; a shower; vacuum cleaner; fridge; heating; air conditioning; electricity; windows; a toilet – even a flush toilet; soap; a balcony or a garden; running water; warm water; cutlery and dishes; a hut – or even a warm apartment or house; an oven; sewing machine; a stove (that doesn’t poison you ); carpet; toilet paper; trash bags; music recordings or even online streaming of the world’s music and film; garbage collection; radio; television; a washing machine; 5 furniture; telephone; a comfortable bed, and a room for one’s own.

Food: The most fundamental need is to have enough food. For much of human history, a large share of people suffered from hunger , and millions still do .

But we also need to have a richer and more varied diet to get all of the nutrients we need. Unfortunately, billions still suffer from micronutrient deficiency .

Also, think of clean drinking water; reliable markets and stores with a wide range of available goods; food that rarely poisons you (pasteurized milk, for example); spices; tea and coffee; kitchen utensils and practical ingredients (from a bag of flour to canned soups or a yogurt); chocolate and sweets; fresh fruit and vegetables; bread; take-away food or the possibility to go to a restaurant; ways to protect your food from spoiling (from the cold chain that delivers the goods to the cellophane to wrap it with); wine or beer; fertilizer ( very important); and tractors to work the fields.

Knowledge: Education from primary up to university level; books; data that allows us to understand the world around us; newspapers; vocational training; kindergartens; and scientific knowledge to understand ourselves and the world around us.

Infrastructure: Public transportation with buses, subways, and trains; roads; paved roads; airplanes; bridges; financial services (including bank accounts, ATMs, and credit cards); cities; a network of competent workers that can help you to fix problems; postal services (that delivers fast); national parks; street cleaning; public swimming pools (even private pools); firefighters; parks; online shopping; weather forecasts; and a waste management system.

Tools and technologies: Pencils, ballpoint pens, and paper; lawnmowers; cars; car mechanics; bicycles; power tools like drills (even battery-powered ones); a watch; computers and laptops; smartphones (with GPS and a good camera); being able to stay in touch with distant friends or family members (or even visiting them); GPS; batteries; telephones and mobiles; video calls; WiFi; and the internet right here.

Social services: Caretakers for those who are disabled, sick, or elderly; protection from crime; non-profit organizations financed by the public, by donations or by philanthropies; insurance (against many different risks); and a legal system with judges and lawyers that implement the rule of law.

There is also a wide range of transfer payments, which in themselves are not services (they are transfers) but which become more affordable as a society becomes more prosperous: sick leave and disability benefits; unemployment benefits; and being able to help others with a regular donation of some of your income to an effective charity . 6

Life and free time : tents; travel and holidays; surfboards; skis; board games; hotels; playgrounds; children’s toys; courses to learn hobbies (from painting to musical instruments or courses on the environment around us); a football; pets; the cinema, theater or a music concert; clothes (even comfortable and good-looking ones that keep you warm and protect you from the rain); shoes (even shoes for different purposes); shoe repair; the contraceptive pill and the ability to choose if and when to have children; sports classes from rock climbing to pilates and yoga; cigarettes (not all goods that people produce for each other are good for them); 7 a musical instrument; a camera; and parties to celebrate life.

Health and staying well: Dentists; antibiotics; surgeries; anesthesia; mental health care from psychologists and psychiatrists; vaccines; public sewage; a haircut; a massage; midwives; ambulances; modern medicine; band-aids; pharmaceutical drugs; sanitary pads; toothbrushes; dental floss (some do floss); disinfectants; glasses; sunglasses; contact lenses; hearing aids; and hospitals – including very well-equipped, modern hospitals that offer CT scans, which include intensive care units and allow heart or brain surgery or organ transplants.

Specific needs and wishes: Most of the products listed above are generally helpful to people. But often, the goods and services that are most important to one individual are very specific.

As I’m writing this, I have a big cast on my left leg after I broke it. These days, I depend on products that I had no use for just three weeks ago. To move around, I need two long crutches, and to prevent thrombosis, I need to inject a blood thinner every day. After I broke my leg, I needed the service of nurses and doctors. They had to rely on a range of medical equipment, such as X-ray machines. To get back on my feet, I might need the service of physiotherapists.

We all have very specific needs or wishes for particular goods and services. Some needs arise from bad luck, like an injury. Others are due to a new phase in life – think of the specific goods and services you need when you have a baby or when you take care of an elderly person. And yet others are due to specific interests – think of the needs of a fisherman, or a pianist, or a painter.

All of these goods and services do not just magically appear. They need to be produced. At some point in the past, the production of most of them was zero, and even the most essential ones were extremely scarce. So, if you want to know what economic growth means for your life, look at the list above.

What is economic growth?

So, how can we define what economic growth is?

A definition that can be found in so many publications that I don’t know which one to quote is that economic growth is “an increase in the amount of goods and services produced per head of the population over a period of time.”

The definition in the Oxford Dictionary is almost identical: “Economic growth is the increase in the production of goods and services per head of population over a stated period of time”. And the definition in the Cambridge Dictionary is similar. It defines growth as “an increase in the economy of a country or an area, especially of the value of goods and services the country or area produces.”

In the following footnote, you find more definitions. Bringing these definitions together and taking into account the economic literature more broadly, I suggest the following definition: Economic growth is an increase in the quantity and quality of the economic goods and services that a society produces.

I prefer a definition that is slightly longer than most others. If you want a shorter definition, you can speak of ‘products’ rather than ‘goods and services’, and you can speak of ‘value’ rather than mentioning both the quantity and quality aspects separately.

The most important change in quantity is from zero to one when a new product becomes available. Many of the most important changes in history became possible when new goods and services were developed; think of antibiotics, vaccines, computers, or the telephone.

You find more thoughts on the definition of growth in the footnote. 8

What are economic goods and services?

Many definitions of economic growth simply speak of the production of ‘goods and services’ collectively. This sidesteps a key difficulty in its definition and measurement. Economic growth is not concerned with all goods and services but with a subset of them: economic goods and services.

In everything we do – even in our most mundane activities – we continuously ‘produce’ goods and services in some form. Early in the morning, once we’ve brushed our teeth and made ourselves toast, we have already produced one service and one good. Should we count the tooth-brushing and the toast-making towards the economic production of the country we live in? The question of where to draw the line isn’t easy to answer. But we have to draw the line somewhere. If we don’t, we end up with a concept of production that is so broad that it becomes meaningless; we’d produce a service with every breath we take and every time we scratch our nose.

The line that we have to draw to define the economic goods and services is called the ‘production boundary’. The sketch illustrates the idea. The production boundary defines those goods and services that we consider when we speak about economic growth.

For a huge number of goods or services, there is no question that they are of the ‘economic’ type. But for some of them, it can be complicated to decide on which side of the production boundary they fall. One example is the question of whether the production of illegal goods should be included. Another is whether production within a household should be included – should we consider it as economic production if we grow tomatoes in our backyard and make soup from them? Different authors and different measurement frameworks have given different answers to these questions. 9

There are some characteristics that are helpful in deciding on which side of the boundary a particular product falls. 10 Economic goods and services are those that can be produced and that are scarce in relation to the demand for them. They stand in contrast to free goods, like sunlight, which are abundant, or those many important aspects in our lives that cannot be produced, like friendships. 11 Our everyday language has this right: we don’t refer to the sun or our friendships as a good or service that we ‘produce’.

An economic good or service is provided by people to each other as a solution to a problem they are faced with, and this means that they are considered useful by the person who demands it.

A last characteristic that helps decide whether you are looking at an economic product is “delegability”. An activity is considered to be production in an economic sense if it can be delegated to someone else. This would include many of the goods and services on that long list we considered earlier but would exclude your breathing, for example.

Because economic goods are scarce in relation to the demand for them, human effort is required to produce them. 12 A shorter way of defining growth is, therefore, to say that it is an increase in the production of those products that people produce for each other.

The majority of goods and services on that long list above are uncontroversially of the economic type – everything from the light bulbs and furniture in your home to the roads and bridges that connect your home with the rest of the world. They are scarce in relation to the demand for them and have to be produced by someone; their production is delegable, and they are considered useful by those who want them.

It’s worth recognizing that many of the difficulties in defining the production boundary arise from the effort to make measures of economic production as comparable as possible.

To give just one concrete example of the type of considerations that make the discussion about specific definitions so difficult, let’s look at how the production boundary is drawn in the housing sector.

Imagine two countries that are identical except for one aspect: home ownership. In Country A, everyone rents their homes, and the total sum of annual rent amounts to €2 billion per year. In Country B, everyone owns their own home, and no one pays rent. To provide housing is certainly an economic service, but if we only counted monetary transactions, then we would get the false impression that the value of goods and services in Country A is €2 billion higher than in Country B. To avoid such misjudgment, the production boundary includes the housing services that are provided without any monetary transactions. In National Accounts, statisticians take into account the “imputed rental value of owner-occupied housing” – those households who own their home get assigned an imputed rental value. In the imagined scenario, these imputed rents would amount to €2 billion in Country B so that the prosperity of people in these two countries would be judged to be identical.

It is the case more broadly that National Account figures (like GDP) do include important non-market goods and services that are not included in household survey measures of people’s income. GDP does not only include the housing services by owner-occupied housing but also the provision of most goods and services that are provided by the government or nonprofit institutions.

How can we measure economic growth?

Many discussions about economic growth are extraordinarily confusing. People often talk past one another.

I believe the key reason for this is that the discussion of what economic growth is gets muddled up with how it is measured .

While it is straightforward enough to define what growth is, measuring growth is very, very difficult.

In the worst cases, measures of growth are mixed up with a definition of growth. Growth is often measured as an increase in income or inflation-adjusted GDP per capita. But these measures are not the definition of it – just like life expectancy is a measure of population health but is certainly not the definition of population health.

To see how difficult it is to measure growth, take a moment to think about how you would measure it. How would you determine whether the quantity and quality of all economic goods and services produced by a society increased or decreased over time?

Finding a measure means that you have to find a way to express a huge amount of relevant information in a single metric. As the sketch shows, you have to first measure the quantity and quality of all the many, many goods and services that get produced and then find a way to aggregate all of these measurements into one summarizing metric. No matter what measure you propose for such a difficult task, there will always be problems and shortcomings in any proposal you might make.

In the following section, I will show four possible ways of measuring growth and present some data for each of them to see how they can inform us about the history of material living conditions.

Measuring economic growth by tracking access to particular goods and services

One possible way to measure growth is to make a list of some specific products that people want and to see what share of the population has access to them.

We do this very often at Our World in Data . The chart here shows the share of the world population that has access to four basic resources. All of these statistics measure some particular aspect of economic growth.

You can switch this chart to any country in the world via the “Change country” option. You will find that, judged by this metric, some countries achieved rapid growth – like Indonesia – while others only saw very little growth, like Chad.

The advantage of measuring growth in this way is that it is concrete. It makes clear what exactly is growing, and it’s clear which particular goods and services people gain access to.

The downside is that it only captures a small part of economic growth. There are many other goods and services that people want in addition to water, electricity, sanitation, and cooking technology. 13

You could, of course, expand this approach of measuring growth to many more goods and services, but this is usually not done for both practical and ethical considerations:

One practical reason is that a list of all the products that people value would be extremely long. Keeping lists that track people’s access to all products would be a daunting task: hundreds of different toothbrushes, thousands of different dentists, hundreds of thousands of different dishes in different restaurants, and many millions of different books. 14 If you wanted to measure growth across all goods and services in this way, you’d soon employ half the country in the statistical office.

In practice, any attempt to measure growth as access to particular products, therefore, means that you look only at a relatively small number of very particular goods and services that statisticians or economists are interested in. This is problematic for ethical reasons. It should not be up to the statisticians or economists to determine which few products should be considered valuable.

You might have realized this problem already when you read my list at the beginning of this text. You might have disagreed with the things that I put on that list and thought that some other goods and services were missing. This is why it is important to track incomes and not just access to particular goods: measuring people’s income is a way of measuring the options that they have rather than the choices that they make. It respects people’s judgment to decide for themselves what they find most important for their lives.

On our site, you find many more such metrics of growth that capture whether people have access to particular goods and services:

• This chart shows the share of US households having access to specific technologies.
• This chart shows the share that has health insurance.
• This chart shows access to schools.

Measuring economic growth by tracking the ratio between people’s income and the prices of particular goods and services

To measure the options that a person’s income represents, we have to compare their income with the prices of the goods and services that they want. We have to look at the ratio between income and prices.

The chart here does this for one particular product – books – and brings us back to the history of growth in the publishing sector that we started with. 15 Shown is the ratio between the average income that a worker receives and the price of a book. It shows how long the average worker had to work to buy one book. Note that this data is plotted on a logarithmic axis.

Before the invention of the printing press in the 15th century, the price was often as high as several months of work. The fact that books were unaffordable for almost everyone should not be surprising. It corresponds to what we’ve seen earlier that it took a scribe several months to produce a single book.

The chart also shows how this changed when the printing press increased the productivity of publishing. As the labor required to produce a book declined from many months of work to less than a day, the price fell from months of wages to mere hours.

This shows us how an innovation in technology raises productivity and how an increase in production makes it more affordable. How it increases the options that people have.

Global inequality: How do incomes compare in countries around the world?

In the previous section, we measured growth as the ratio between income and the price of one particular good. But of course, we could do the same for all the many goods and services that people want. This ratio – the ratio between the nominal income that people receive and the prices that people have to pay for goods and services – is called ‘real income’ . 16

Real income = Nominal income / price of goods and services

Real income grows when people’s nominal income increases or when the prices of goods and services decrease.

In contrast to many of the other metrics on Our World in Data, a person’s real income does not matter for its own sake but because it is a means to an end. A means to many ends, in fact.

Economic growth – measured as an increase in people’s real income – means that the ratio between people’s income and the prices of what they can buy is increasing: goods and services become more affordable, and people become less poor. It is because a person has more choices as their income grows that economists care so much about these monetary measures of prosperity.

The two most prominent measures of real income are GDP per capita and people’s incomes, as determined through household surveys.

They are shown in this chart.

Before we get back to the question of economic growth, let’s see what these measures of real income tell us about the economic inequality in the world today.

Both measures show that global inequality is very large. In a rich country like Denmark, an average person can purchase goods and services for $54 a day, while the average Ethiopian can only afford goods and services that cost $3 per day.

Both measures of real incomes in this chart are measured in international dollars, which means that they take into account the level of prices in each country (using purchasing power parity conversion factors). This price adjustment is done in such a way that one international-$ is equivalent to the purchasing power of one US-$ in the US . An income of int.-$3 in Ethiopia, for example, means that it allows you to purchase goods and services in Ethiopia that would cost US-$3 in the US . All dollar values in this text are given in international dollars, even though I often shorten it to just the $-sign.

If you are living in a rich country and you want to have a sense of what it means to live in a poor country – where incomes are 20 times lower – you can imagine that the prices for everything around you suddenly increase 20-fold. 17 If all the things you buy suddenly get 20-times more expensive your real income is 20-times lower. A loaf of bread doesn’t cost $2 but $40, a pair of jeans costs $400, and an old car costs $40,000. If you ask yourself how these price increases would change your daily consumption and your day-to-day life, you can get a sense of what it means to live in a poor country.

The two shown measures of real income differ:

• The data on the vertical axis is based on surveys in which researchers go from house to house and ask people about their economic situation. In some countries, people are asked about their income, while in other countries, people are asked about their expenditure – expenditure is income minus savings. In poor countries, these two measures are close to each other since poor people do not have the chance to save much.
• On the other hand, GDP per capita starts at the aggregate level and divides the income of the entire economy by the number of people in that country. GDP per capita is higher than per capita survey income because GDP is a more comprehensive measure of income. As we’ve discussed before, it includes an imputed rental value of owner-occupied housing and other differences, such as government expenditure.

Income as a measure of economic prosperity is much more abstract than the metrics we looked at previously. The comparison of incomes of people around the world in this scatterplot measures options, not choices. It shows us that the economic options for billions of people are very low. The majority of the world lives on very low incomes of less than $20, $10, or even $5 per day. In the next section, we’ll see how poverty has changed over time.

• GDP per capita vs. Daily income of the poorest 10%
• GDP per capita vs. Daily average income

Global poverty and growth: How have incomes changed around the world?

Economic growth, as we said before, is an increase in the production of the quantity and quality of the economic goods and services that a society produces. The total income in a society corresponds to the total sum of goods and services the society produces – everyone’s spending is someone else’s income. This means that the average income corresponds to the level of average production, so that the average income in a society increases when the production of goods and services increases.

Average production = average income

In this final section, let’s see how incomes have changed over time, first as documented in survey incomes and then via GDP per capita.

Measuring economic growth by tracking incomes as reported in household surveys

The chart shows the income of people around the world over time, as reported in household surveys. It shows the share of the world population that lives below different poverty lines: from extremely low poverty lines up to $30 per day, which corresponds to notions of poverty in high-income countries .

Many of the poorest people in the world rely on subsistence farming and do not have a monetary income. To take this into account and make a fair comparison of their living standards, the statisticians who produce these figures estimate the monetary value of their home production and add it to their income.

Again, the prices of goods and services are taken into account: these are measures of real incomes. As explained before, incomes are adjusted for price differences between countries, and they are also adjusted for inflation. As a consequence of these two adjustments, incomes are expressed in international dollars in 2017 prices, which means that these income measures express what you would have been able to buy with US dollars in the US in 201 7.

Global economic growth can be seen in this chart as an increasing share of the population living on higher incomes. In 2000 two thirds of the world lived on less than $6.85 per day. In the following 19 years, this share fell by 22 percentage points.

In 2020 and 2021 — during the economic recession that followed the pandemic — the size of the world economy declined, and the share of people in poverty increased . As soon as global data for this period is available, we will update this chart.

The data shows that global poverty has declined, no matter what poverty line you choose. It also shows that the majority of the world still lives on very low incomes. As we’ve seen, we can describe the same reality from the production side: the global production of the goods and services that people want has increased, but there is still not enough production of even very basic products. Most people in the world do not have access to them.

An advantage of household survey data over GDP per capita is that it captures the inequality of incomes within a country. You can explore this inequality with this chart by switching to see the data for an individual country via the ‘Change country’ button.

Measuring economic growth by tracking GDP per capita

GDP per capita is a broader measure of real income, and in contrast to survey income, it also takes government expenditures into account. A lot of thinking has gone into the construction of this very prominent metric so that it is comparable not only over time but also across countries. This makes it especially useful as a measure to understand the economic inequality in the world, as we’ve seen above. 18

Another advantage of this measure is that historians have reconstructed estimates of GDP per capita that go back many centuries. This historical research is an extremely laborious task , and researchers have dedicated many years of work to these reconstructions. The ‘Maddison Project’ brings together these long-run reconstructions from various researchers, and thanks to these efforts, we have a good understanding of how incomes have changed over time.

The chart shows how average incomes in different world regions have changed over the last two centuries. Looking at the latest data, you see again the very large inequality between different parts of the world today. You now also see the history of how we got here: small increases in production in some world regions and very large increases in those regions where people have the highest incomes today.

One of the very first countries to achieve sustained economic growth was the United Kingdom. In this chart, we see the reconstructions of GDP per capita in the UK over the last centuries.

It is no accident that the shape of this chart is very similar to the chart on book production at the beginning of this text – very low and almost flat for many generations and then quickly rising. Both of these developments are driven by changes in production.

Average income corresponds to average production, and societies around the world were able to produce very few goods and services in the past. There were no major exceptions to this reality. As we see in this chart, global inequality was much lower than today: the majority of people around the world were very poor.

To get a sense of what this means, you can again take the approach we’ve used to understand the inequality in the world today. When incomes in today’s rich countries were 20 times lower, it was as if all the prices around you today would suddenly increase 20-fold. But in addition to this, you have to consider that all the goods and services that were developed since then disappeared – no bicycle, no internet, no antibiotics. All that’s left for you are the goods and services of the 17th century, but all of them are 20 times more expensive than today. The majority of people around the world, including in today’s richest countries, live in deep poverty.

Just as we’ve seen in the history of book production, this changed once new production technologies were introduced. The printing press was an exceptionally early innovation in production technology; most innovations happened in the last 250 years. The starting point of this rise out of poverty is called the Industrial Revolution.

The printing press made it possible to produce more books. The many innovations that made up the Industrial Revolution made it possible to increase the production of many goods and services. Compare the effort that it takes for a farmer to reap corn with a scythe to the possibilities of a farmer with a tractor or a combined harvester, or think of the technologies that made overland travel faster – from walking on foot to traveling in a horse buggy to taking the train or car; or think of the effort it took to build those roads that the buggies once traveled on with the modern machinery that allows us to produce the corresponding public infrastructure today .

The production of a myriad of different goods and services followed trajectories very similar to the production of books – flat and low in the past and then steeply increasing. The rise in average income that we see in this chart is the result of the aggregation of all these production increases.

In the past, before societies achieved economic growth, the only way for anyone to become richer was for someone else to become poorer; the economy was a zero-sum game. In a society that achieves economic growth, this is no longer the case. When average incomes increase, it becomes possible for people to become richer without someone else becoming poorer.

This transition from a zero-sum to a positive-sum economy is the most important change in economic history (I wrote about it here ) and made it possible for entire societies to leave the extreme poverty of the past behind.

Conclusion: The history of global poverty reduction has just begun

The chart shows the global history of extreme poverty and economic growth.

In the top left panel, you can see how global poverty has declined as incomes increased; in the other eight panels, you see the same for all world regions separately. The starting point of each trajectory shows the data for 1820 and tells us that two centuries ago, the majority of people lived in extreme poverty, no matter where in the world they were at home.

Back then, it was widely believed that widespread poverty was inevitable. But this turned out to be wrong. The trajectories show how incomes and poverty have changed in each world region. All regions achieved growth – the goods and services that people need saw their production and quality increase – and the share living in extreme poverty declined. 19

This historical research was done by Michail Moatsos and is based on the ‘cost of basic needs’-approach as suggested by Robert Allen (2017) and recommended by the late Tony Atkinson. 20 The name ‘extreme poverty’ is appropriate as this measure is based on an extremely low poverty threshold. It takes us back to what I mentioned at the very beginning; this historical research tells us – as the author puts it – that three-quarters of the world "could not afford a tiny space to live, food that would not induce malnutrition, and some minimum heating capacity.”

Since then, all world regions have made progress against extreme poverty – some much earlier than others – but in particular, in Sub-Saharan Africa, the share of people living in deep poverty is still very high.

The last two centuries were the first time in human history that societies have achieved sustained economic growth, and the decline of global poverty is one of the most important achievements in history. But it is still a very long way to go.

This is what we see in this final chart. The red line shows the share of people living in extreme poverty that we just discussed. Additionally, you now also see the share living on less than $3.65, $6.85, and $30 per day. 21

The world today is very unequal, and the majority of the world still lives in poverty: 47% live on less than $6.85 per day, and 84% live on less than $30. Even after two centuries of progress, we are still in the early stages. The history of global poverty reduction has only just begun.

That the world has made substantial progress but nevertheless still has a long way to go is the case for many of the world’s very large problems. I’ve written before that all three statements are true at the same time: The world is much better, the world is awful, and the world can be much better. This is very much the case for global poverty. The world is much less poor than in the past, but it is still very poor, and it remains one of the largest problems we face.

Some writers suggest we can end poverty by simply reducing global inequality. This is not the case. I’m very much in favor of reducing global inequality, and I hope I do what I can to contribute to this. But it is important to be clear that a reduction of inequality alone would still mean that billions around the world would live in very poor conditions. Those who don’t see the importance of growth are not aware of the extent of global poverty. The production of many crucial goods and services has to increase if we want to end it. How much economic growth is needed to achieve this? This is the question I answered in this recent text .

To solve the problems we face, it is not enough to increase overall production. We also need to make good decisions about which goods and services we want to produce more of and which ones we want less of. Growth doesn’t just have a rate, it also has a direction, and the direction we choose matters – for our own happiness and for achieving a sustainable future .

I hope this text was helpful in making clear what economic growth is. It is necessary to remind ourselves of that because we mostly talk about poverty and growth in monetary terms. The monetary measures have the disadvantage that they are abstract, perhaps so abstract that we even forget what growth is actually about and why it is so important. The goods and services that we all need are not just there – they need to be produced – and economic growth means that the quality and quantity of these goods and services increase, from the food that we eat to the public infrastructure we rely on.

The history of economic growth is the history of how societies leave widespread poverty behind by finding ways to produce more of the goods and services that people need – all the very many goods and services that people produce for each other: look around you now.

Acknowledgments: I would like to thank Joe Hasell and Hannah Ritchie for very helpful comments on draft versions of this article.

Our World in Data presents the data and research to make progress against the world’s largest problems. This article draws on data and research discussed in our topic pages on Economic Inequality , Global Poverty , and Economic Growth .

Version history: In October 2023, I copy-edited this article; it was a minor update, and nothing substantial was changed.

Michail Moatsos (2021) – Global extreme poverty: Present and past since 1820. Published in OECD (2021), How Was Life? Volume II: New Perspectives on Well-being and Global Inequality since 1820 , OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/3d96efc5-en .

At the time when material prosperity was so poor, living conditions were extremely poor in general; close to half of all children died .

Historian Gregory Clark reports the estimate that scribes were able to copy about 3,000 words of plain text per day.

See Clark (2007) – A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World. Clark (2007). In it, Clark quotes his earlier working paper with Patricia Levin as the source of these estimates. Gregory Clark and Patricia Levin (2001) – “How Different Was the Industrial Revolution? The Revolution in Printing, 1350–1869.”

There are about 760,000 words in the bible (it differs between various translations and languages; here is an overview of some translations).

This implies that the production of one copy of the Bible meant 253.3 days (8.3 months) of daily work.

Copying the text was not the only step in the production process for which productivity was low. The ink had to be made, parchment had to be produced and cut, and many other steps involved laborious work.

Wikipedia’s article about scribes reports sources that estimate that the production time per bible was even longer than 8 months.

Clark himself states in the same publication that “Prior to that innovation, books had to be copied by hand, with copyists on works with just plain text still only able to copy 3,000 words per day. Producing one copy of the Bible at this rate would take 136 man-days.” Since the product of 136 and 3000 is only 408,000, it is unclear to me how Clark has arrived at this estimate – 408,000 words are fewer words than in the Tanakh and other versions of the bible.

The data is taken from Eltjo Buringh and Jan Luiten Van Zanden (2009) – Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, a Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries. In The Journal of Economic History Vol. 69, No. 2 (June 2009), pp. 409-445. Online here .

Western Europe in this study is the area of today’s Great Britain, Ireland, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and Poland.

On the history and economics of book production, see also the historical work of Jeremiah Dittmar.

I’ve relied on several sources to produce this list. One source was the simple descriptions of the consumption bundles that are relied upon for CPI measurement – like this one from Germany’s statistical office . And I have also relied on the national accounts themselves.

This list is also inspired partly by this list of Gwern and I’m also grateful for the feedback that I got via Twitter to earlier versions of this list. [ Here I shared the list on Twitter ]

This is Hans Rosling’s talk on the magic of the washing machine – worth watching if you haven’t seen it.

Of course all of these transfer payments have a service component to them, someone is managing the payment of the disability benefits etc.

Because smoking causes a large amount of suffering and death I do not find cigarettes valuable, but my opinion is not what matters for a list of goods and services that people produce for each other. Whether some good is considered to be part of the domestic product depends on whether it is a good that some people want, not whether you or I want it. More on this below.

Very similar to the definitions given above is the definition that Kimberly Amadeo gives: “Economic growth is an increase in the production of goods and services over a specific period.”

“Economic growth is an increase in the production of economic goods and services, compared from one period of time to another” is the definition at Investopedia .

Alternatively, to my definition, I think it can be useful to think of economic growth as not directly concerned with the output as such but with the capacity to produce this output. The NASDAQ’s glossary defines growth in that way: “An increase in the nation's capacity to produce goods and services.”

Wikipedia defines economic growth as follows: “Economic growth can be defined as the increase in the inflation-adjusted market value of the goods and services produced by an economy over time.” Definitions that are based on how growth is measured strike me as wrong – just like life expectancy is a measure of population health and hardly the definition of population health. I will get back to this mistake further below in this text.

An aspect that I emphasize more explicitly than others is the quality of the goods and services. People obviously do just care about the number of goods, and in the literature on growth, the measurement of changes in quality is a central question. Many definitions speak more broadly about the ‘value’ of the goods and services that are produced, but I think it is worth emphasizing that growth is also concerned with a rise in the quality of goods and services.

OECD – Measuring the Non-Observed Economy: A Handbook .

The relevant numbers are not small. For the US alone, “illegal drugs add $108 billion to measured nominal GDP in 2017, illegal prostitution adds $10 billion, illegal gambling adds $4 billion, and theft from businesses adds $109 billion” if they were to be included in the US National Accounts. This is according to the report by Rachel Soloveichik (2019) – Including Illegal Activity in the U.S. National Economic Accounts . Published by the BEA.

Ironmonger (2001) – Household Production. In International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences. Pages 6934-6939. https://doi.org/10.1016/B0-08-043076-7/03964-4

Or for some longer run data on the US: Danit Kanal and Joseph Ted Kornegay (2019) – Accounting for Household Production in the National Accounts: An Update, 1965–2017 . In the Survey of Current Business.

Helpful references that discuss how the production boundary is drawn (and how it changed over time) are: Lequiller and Blades – Understanding National Accounts (available in various editions) Diane Coyle (2016) – GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691169859/gdp

The definition of the production boundary by Statistics Finland

Itsuo Sakuma (2013) – The Production Boundary Reconsidered. In The Review of Income and Wealth. Volume 59, Issue 3; Pages 556-567.

Diane Coyle (2017) – Do-it-Yourself Digital: The Production Boundary and the Productivity Puzzle. ESCoE Discussion Paper 2017-01, Available at SSRN: http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2986725

A more general way of thinking about free goods and services is to consider them as those for which the supply is hugely greater than the demand.

Their production, therefore, has an opportunity cost, which means that if someone obtains an economic good, someone is giving up on something for it – this can either be the person themselves or society more broadly. Free goods, in contrast, are provided with zero opportunity cost to society.

It is also the case that the international statistics on these measures often have very low cutoffs for what it means ‘to have access’; this is, for example, the case for what it means to have access to energy.

10 years ago, Google counted there were 129,864,880 different books, and since then, the number has increased further by many thousands of new books every day.

This chart is from Jeremiah Dittmar and Skipper Seabold (2019) – New Media New Knowledge – How the printing press led to a transformation of European thought . I was unfortunately not able to find the raw data anywhere and could not redraw this chart; if someone knows where this (or comparable) data can be found, please let me know.

In the language of economists, the nominal value is measured in terms of money, whereas the real value is measured against goods or services. This means that the real income is the income adjusted for inflation (it is adjusted for the changes in prices of goods and services). Thereby, it allows comparisons that tell us the quantity and quality of the goods and services that people were able to purchase at different points in time.

I learned this way of thinking about it from Twitter user @Kirsten3531, who responded with this idea to a tweet of mine here https://twitter.com/Kirsten3531/status/1389553625308045317

We’ve discussed one such consideration that is crucial for comparability when we consider how to take into account the value of owner-occupied housing.

Whether economic growth translates into the reduction of poverty depends not only on the growth itself but also on how the distribution of income changes. The poverty metrics shown in this chart and in previous charts take both of these aspects – the average level of production/income and its distribution – into account.

Jutta Bolt and Jan Luiten van Zanden (2021) – The GDP data in the chart is taken from The Long View on Economic Growth: New Estimates of GDP, How Was Life? Volume II: New Perspectives on Well-being and Global Inequality since 1820 , OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/3d96efc5-en .

The latest data point for the poverty data refers to 2018, while the latest data point for GDP per capita refers to 2016. In the chart, I have chosen the middle year (2017) as the reference year.

The ‘cost of basic needs’-approach was recommended by the ‘World Bank Commission on Global Poverty’, headed by Tony Atkinson, as a complementary method in measuring poverty.

The report for the ‘World Bank Commission on Global Poverty’ can be found here .

Tony Atkinson – and, after his death, his colleagues – turned this report into a book that was published as Anthony B. Atkinson (2019) – Measuring Poverty Around the World. You find more information on Atkinson’s website .

The CBN-approach Moatsos’ work is based on what was suggested by Allen in Robert Allen (2017) – Absolute poverty: When necessity displaces desire. In American Economic Review, Vol. 107/12, pp. 3690-3721, https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20161080 .

Moatsos describes the methodology as follows: “In this approach, poverty lines are calculated for every year and country separately, rather than using a single global line. The second step is to gather the necessary data to operationalize this approach alongside imputation methods in cases where not all the necessary data are available. The third step is to devise a method for aggregating countries’ poverty estimates on a global scale to account for countries that lack some of the relevant data.” In his publication – linked above – you find much more detail on all of the shown poverty data. The speed at which extreme poverty declined increased over time, as the chart shows. Moatsos writes, “It took 136 years from 1820 for our global poverty rate to fall under 50%, then another 45 years to cut this rate in half again by 2001. In the early 21st century, global poverty reduction accelerated, and in 13 years, our global measure of extreme poverty was halved again by 2014.”

These are the same global poverty estimates – based on household surveys – we discussed above.

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The Global Economic Outlook During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Changed World

An empty highway in Dubai during the coronavirus pandemic. Above the highway, a sign reads "Stay Safe, Stay Home."  © Mo Azizi/Shutterstock

The COVID-19 pandemic has spread with alarming speed, infecting millions and bringing economic activity to a near-standstill as countries imposed tight restrictions on movement to halt the spread of the virus. As the health and human toll grows, the economic damage is already evident and represents the largest economic shock the world has experienced in decades.

The June 2020 Global Economic Prospects  describes both the immediate and near-term outlook for the impact of the pandemic and the long-term damage it has dealt to prospects for growth. The baseline forecast envisions a 5.2 percent contraction in global GDP in 2020, using market exchange rate weights—the deepest global recession in decades, despite the extraordinary efforts of governments to counter the downturn with fiscal and monetary policy support. Over the longer horizon, the deep recessions triggered by the pandemic are expected to leave lasting scars through lower investment, an erosion of human capital through lost work and schooling, and fragmentation of global trade and supply linkages.

The crisis highlights the need for urgent action to cushion the pandemic’s health and economic consequences, protect vulnerable populations, and set the stage for a lasting recovery. For emerging market and developing countries, many of which face daunting vulnerabilities, it is critical to strengthen public health systems, address the challenges posed by informality, and implement reforms that will support strong and sustainable growth once the health crisis abates.

Historic contraction of per capita income

The pandemic is expected to plunge most countries into recession in 2020, with per capita income contracting in the largest fraction of countries globally since 1870. Advanced economies are projected to shrink 7 percent. That weakness will spill over to the outlook for emerging market and developing economies, who are forecast to contract by 2.5 percent as they cope with their own domestic outbreaks of the virus. This would represent the weakest showing by this group of economies in at least sixty years.

Every region is subject to substantial growth downgrades. East Asia and the Pacific will grow by a scant 0.5%. South Asia will contract by 2.7%, Sub-Saharan Africa by 2.8%, Middle East and North Africa by 4.2%, Europe and Central Asia by 4.7%, and Latin America by 7.2%.  These downturns are expected to reverse years of progress toward development goals and tip tens of millions of people back into extreme poverty.

Emerging market and developing economies will be buffeted by economic headwinds from multiple quarters: pressure on weak health care systems, loss of trade and tourism, dwindling remittances, subdued capital flows, and tight financial conditions amid mounting debt. Exporters of energy or industrial commodities will be particularly hard hit. The pandemic and efforts to contain it have triggered an unprecedented collapse in oil demand and a crash in oil prices. Demand for metals and transport-related commodities such as rubber and platinum used for vehicle parts has also tumbled. While agriculture markets are well supplied globally, trade restrictions and supply chain disruptions could yet raise food security issues in some places.

A possibility of even worse outcomes

Even this bleak outlook is subject to great uncertainty and significant downside risks. The forecast assumes that the pandemic recedes in such a way that domestic mitigation measures can be lifted by mid-year in advanced economies and later in developing countries, that adverse global spillovers ease during the second half of 2020, and that widespread financial crises are avoided. This scenario would envision global growth reviving, albeit modestly, to 4.2% in 2021.

However, this view may be optimistic. Should COVID-19 outbreaks persist, should restrictions on movement be extended or reintroduced, or should disruptions to economic activity be prolonged, the recession could be deeper. Businesses might find it hard to service debt, heightened risk aversion could lead to climbing borrowing costs, and bankruptcies and defaults could result in financial crises in many countries. Under this downside scenario, global growth could shrink by almost 8% in 2020.

Looking at the speed with which the crisis has overtaken the global economy may provide a clue to how deep the recession will be. The sharp pace of global growth forecast downgrades points to the possibility of yet further downward revisions and the need for additional action by policymakers in coming months to support economic activity.

A particularly concerning aspect of the outlook is the humanitarian and economic toll the global recession will take on economies with extensive informal sectors that make up an estimated one-third of the GDP and about 70% of total employment in emerging market and developing economies. Policymakers must consider innovative measures to deliver income support to these workers and credit support to these businesses.

Long-term damage to potential output, productivity growth

The June 2020 Global Economic Prospects looks beyond the near-term outlook to what may be lingering repercussions of the deep global recession: setbacks to potential output⁠—the level of output an economy can achieve at full capacity and full employment⁠—and labor productivity.  Efforts to contain COVID-19 in emerging and developing economies, including low-income economies with limited health care capacity, could precipitate deeper and longer recessions⁠—exacerbating a multi-decade trend of slowing potential growth and productivity growth. Many emerging and developing economies were already experiencing weaker growth before this crisis; the shock of COVID-19 now makes the challenges these economies face even harder. 

Another important feature of the current landscape is the historic collapse in oil demand and oil prices. Low oil prices are likely to provide, at best, temporary initial support to growth once restrictions to economic activity are lifted. However, even after demand recovers, adverse impacts on energy exporters may outweigh any benefits to activity in energy importers. Low oil prices offer an opportunity to oil producers to diversify their economies. In addition, the recent oil price plunge may provide further momentum to undertake energy subsidy reforms and deepen them once the immediate health crisis subsides.

In the face of this disquieting outlook, the immediate priority for policymakers is to address the health crisis and contain the short-term economic damage. Over the longer term, authorities need to undertake comprehensive reform programs to improve the fundamental drivers of economic growth once the crisis lifts.

Policies to rebuild both in the short and long-term entail strengthening health services and putting in place targeted stimulus measures to help reignite growth , including support for the private sector and getting money directly to people. During the mitigation period, countries should focus on sustaining economic activity with support for households, firms and essential services.

Global coordination and cooperation—of the measures needed to slow the spread of the pandemic, and of the economic actions needed to alleviate the economic damage, including international support—provide the greatest chance of achieving public health goals and enabling a robust global recovery.

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How to Write a Good Economics Essay

Last Updated: March 7, 2023 References

This article was co-authored by Emily Listmann, MA . Emily Listmann is a private tutor in San Carlos, California. She has worked as a Social Studies Teacher, Curriculum Coordinator, and an SAT Prep Teacher. She received her MA in Education from the Stanford Graduate School of Education in 2014. This article has been viewed 127,808 times.

A good economics essay requires a clear argument that is well-supported by appropriately referenced evidence. Research your topic thoroughly and then carefully plan out your essay. A good structure is essential, as is sticking closely to the main essay question. Be sure to proofread your essay and try to write in formal and precise prose.

Preparing to Write Your Essay

• For example a question such as “Discuss the macroeconomic consequences of rising house prices, alongside falling interest rates” could be divided into 2 parts: 1 part could be on the effects of rising prices, and 1 on the effects of falling interest rates.
• In this example you could begin by discussing each separately and then bringing the 2 together and analysing how they influence each other.
• Be sure to keep the question at the forefront of your mind and don’t veer off topic. [1] X Research source

• Be sure that you understand all the key terms that you are being asked about.
• Try to keep your reading focussed closely to the essay question.
• Don’t forget to look at any lecture or class notes you have made.
• 3 Come up with a thesis statement . A thesis statement is the main argument you will make in your essay. It should be 1-2 sentences long and respond to the essential question that’s being asked. The thesis will help you structure the body of your essay, and each point you make should relate back to the thesis.

• Once you have put together a list of key points, then try to add in some more detail that brings in elements from your research.
• When you come to write out your essay, you can develop a paragraph based on each point.

• All of the evidence and explanation will be in the main body of the essay.
• Order the key points in the body of your essay in such a way that they flow logically.
• If you are writing a longer essay, you can break the main body into different sections. [2] X Research source
• If you have a word limit, be sure to take this into account when you are planning.
• Allocate yourself a rough number of words per section.
• The introduction and conclusion can be just a paragraph each.

Writing the Essay

• What your essay is about.
• What material you will cover in the essay.
• What your argument is. [3] X Research source

• Having this stated clearly at the start can help you to stay focussed on the question as you work your way through the essay.
• Try writing out this one or two sentence statement and sticking it up in front of you as you write, so it’s stays at the forefront of your mind.

• Try to begin each paragraph with a sentence that outlines what the paragraph will cover.
• Look at the opening sentence of each paragraph and ask yourself if it is addressing the essay question. [5] X Research source

• Try to engage with arguments that run counter to yours, and use the evidence you have found to show the flaws.
• It might help to imagine someone reading the essay, and anticipating the objections that he might raise.
• Showing that you have thought about potential problems, and you can make an argument that overcomes them, is a hallmark of an excellent essay. [6] X Research source
• If there is conflicting evidence, discuss it openly and try to show where the weight of the evidence lies. [7] X Research source
• Don’t just ignore the evidence that runs counter to your argument.

• In the conclusion you can add a few sentences that show how your essay could be developed and taken further.
• Here you can assert why the question is important and make some tentative suggestions for further analysis.

Proofreading and Making Revisions

• As you read through it, think about how closely you stick to main overarching question.
• If you notice paragraphs that drift off into other areas, you need to be tough and cut them out.
• You have a limited number of words so it’s essential to make every one count by keeping tightly focussed on the main question.

• Think about how you use the evidence too. Do you critically engage with it, or do you merely quote it to support your point?
• A good analytical essay such discuss evidence critically at all times.
• Even if the evidence supports your argument, you need to show that you have thought about the value of this particular piece of data.
• Try to avoid making any assumptions, or writing as if something were beyond dispute. [10] X Research source

• Remember an academic essay should be written in a formal style, so avoid colloquialisms.
• Avoid contractions, such as “don’t”, or “won’t”.
• Try to avoid paragraphs that are more than ten or fifteen lines long.
• Think about how it looks on the page. [12] X Research source

• Always include a bibliography, but don’t include references to things you haven’t read or didn’t inform your argument. [13] X Research source
• Your teacher will know if you just add a load of titles into your bibliography that are not evidenced in the body of your essay.
• Always follow the bibliography format used by your department or class.

Community Q&A

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• ↑ http://www.economicshelp.org/help/tips-economic-essays/
• ↑ http://www.writing.utoronto.ca/advice/planning-and-organizing/organizing
• ↑ http://carleton.ca/economics/courses/writing-preliminaries/academic-essay-writing/
• ↑ https://www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk/archive/lse_writing/page_11.htm
• ↑ http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~mcmillan/writing.pdf
• ↑ https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/economics/documents/pdf/essaywriting-departmentofeconomics.pdf

About This Article

Before you begin writing your economics essay, make sure to carefully read the prompt so that you have a clear sense of the paper's purpose and scope. Once you have read the prompt, conduct research using your textbook and relevant articles. If you cannot find research materials, ask your instructor for recommendations. After your research is done, construct a 1-2 sentence thesis statement and begin outlining your main ideas so that your essay will have a clear structure. Make sure to leave time to write a draft and revise your work before it is due. If you want to learn more, like how to cite the sources you used for your essay, keep reading the article! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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How to Write a Good Economics Essay

Governor November 28, 2019 Real World Applications 3 Comments

Many students ask “How to write an economics essay?” This Guide to Writing a Good Economics Essay is applicable to both IB economics as well as the Singapore JC A-Level H2 economics examinations. Many of the pointers here are also applicable to large-mark case study questions.

6 Steps to Writing a Good Economics Essay

Step 1: dissect the question.

Make sure you analyse and fully understand the KEYWORDS and REQUIREMENTS of the question. This is a very important skill that is taught in our economics tuition classes .

For example, “Best”, “Most Effective” are closely related but mean different things.

Paraphrase the question to make it simpler if necessary.

Take note of the command word (eg: Explain, Discuss) as it determines the approach needed for the essay, for example, whether two sides are needed or one side is sufficient. Below are some common examples found in economics essay questions:

Command Words                                      Action Required

Account for                                                 Explain why

Analyse                                                        Break it down into step-by-step explanations

Assess                                                          For & Against. Consider other factors.

Compare                                                      Identify Similarities & Differences

Distinguish                                                   Point out differences

Discuss                                                        Explore both sides

Evaluate                                                       The Good and The Bad.

Explain                                                          Show why and how

Explain whether                                            Cover both possibilities

Examine                                                        Look closely. How so and how not so?

To What Extent                                              Yes…..But….Judgment

Remember to look out for the context in the question. This is usually given in the form of a country (eg: Singapore). The examples in your essay must be tailored to this particular context (for example, do not suggest interest rate policy for Singapore as that is considered infeasible in the Singapore context). If no context is given, any real-world example can be used.

Keep in mind the question throughout the essay and remember to always answer the question. Don’t go off-point!

Common Examiner’s Comment :  Not Answering Question (NAQ))

Step 2: Plan Your Answer

Take some time to consider what economic framework you will use to approach the question. Scribble down your main thesis and anti-thesis points. Ensure they ANSWER THE QUESTION.

Step 3: Essay Introduction

In the introduction, include definitions of keywords in the question and spell out the economic framework you will employ for your answer as well as key definitions.

Step 4: Body of Essay

In the body , there will be several paragraphs. 

The number of points/paragraphs depends on the question. It is common to require 2 main points for each 10 mark essay and similarly for 15 mark essay questions. Under each main point, there may be 1-2 sub-points.

Use one paragraph for each sub-point you are making.

However, do not be too focussed on the number of points or paragraphs. The key is to answer the question.

For each body paragraph , use TET’s PEEL(ED) structure. Include only one main idea per paragraph.

• Point – Write your point in the first sentence so that markers will know what the paragraph will be about. The topic sentence must directly answer the question!
• Explanation – Explain what you mean
• Elaboration – Provide further analysis with clear step-by-step economic reasoning. This part may be done with examples as well as diagrams.
• Link – Link your explanations back to the Point and to answer the question.
• Exemplification – Give an example to support your reasoning. It can be statistics or real-world examples (for Case Studies, evidences from the Case must be uncovered!)
• Diagram – Where possible, araw an appropriate diagram with correct labelling and refer to it in your answer. This is crucial to show economic reasoning. Diagrams are very important for economics essays!

These are of course much easier said than done! Thus, students in our economics tuition classes are regularly honed to achieve such output including with tips and tricks to spark off the correct thinking process.

Our resources including the Study Guides for A Level and IB economics also provide a very powerful and handy reference on the depth of analysis required to score the highest marks.

Common Examiner’s Comment :  Mere statements and claims. No economic rigour.

Step 5: In-Body Evaluation

This applies especially to the 15 mark essays for A-Level Economics. A total of 5 marks is catered for Evaluation. Students should attempt to achieve about 2-3 in-body evaluation marks by pointing out how the thesis and anti-thesis points may not be true due to certain assumptions made that may not hold. Students may write “However,….may not necessarily happen……It would depend on whether….”. This statement can be written after the associated sub-point has been made.

Step 6: CONCLUDING SECTION

This only applies to the 15 mark essay questions.

Earn more evaluation marks by making a reasoned judgement. Deliver your verdict like a Judge! 

Check back on the question before you embark on this. Ensure your judgement answers the question.

So the question now is, how does a judge arrive at and deliver a verdict? Certainly, you should not be summarising or merely paraphrasing your main points in the conclusion. Obviously, you cannot expect more marks by saying the same thing over and over again!

After a verdict and reasons have been provided, consider providing further relevant insights and/or recommendations.

Common Examiner’s Comment :  Repetitive. Mere Summary.

Here are some quite common types of Concluding Sections 

• Consider the relative importance of thesis and anti-thesis factors. Which factors are most important or pertinent in the given context? For example, certain policies better fit specifc types of economies.
• Consider short-term vs long-term pros and cons. Do the short-term benefits outweigh the long-term costs? Is the policy more effective in the long-term, and if so, how pressing is the problem that needs to be addressed?
• Suggest a multi-policy approach, in which each policy has strengths and weaknesses that allow them to complement each other.

There is no way to really memorise evaluation points as every question and context is different. After all, you are being tested on higher-order thinking!

There are other evaluation tips that our students will receive but the key point here is that the training of the mind to think and apply economics is essential. That is where our weekly economics lessons come into play and that is why our students are often asked questions in class and trained to think on their feet. As ex-student Xue Min from YIJC testified, Chief Tutor Mr. Kelvin Hong does not just spoon-feeds our students but mentors them in their thinking to arrive at the answers. This was different from other tutors that her classmates experienced and eventually this was the key to Xue Min’s A grade.

In your essay, write in simple and clear sentences. Everything you write should be value-adding. You do not have to spend time showing off vocabulary as no extra points are awarded for language. Focus on economic reasoning. Use succinct and effective examples which support the point you are trying to make as well as accurate diagrammatic analyses.

For samples of great economics essays, please check out our free Economics Model Essays and sample Past JC A-Level Economics Questions and Answers .

For our econs publications that are sold worldwide, please check out our A Level & IB Economics Study Guides and Model Essays Publications

About The Economics Tutor

Founded by Kelvin Hong in 1998, The Economics Tutor is one of the leading economics tuition in Singapore. We provide a comprehensive program to guide students in understanding complex economic concepts and applying them through case study analyses, essay writing and discussion of real world events.

For 24 years, the way we teach JC Economics Tuition (A Level Economics Tuition) and IB Economics Tuition classes helped learners appreciate economics and everything it entails on a much larger scale. We take things step-by-step, implement effective techniques in memorising frameworks and give every student the chance to nurture their ideas. 

We don’t just solely focus on helping you get stellar grades and perfect scores. We make sure that we also hone the critical thinking skills and investment / business decisions you can use outside the four walls of your classroom.

Looking for a fun, engaging and probably the best economics tutor in Singapore? Look no further—check out our extensive and high quality economics resources on the website such as our IB and A Level Economics Publication. Click here to order .

Book your lesson today and master the nuances of economics in our next class!

its good knowledgeable post regarding ib economics commentaries. i just wanted to admin can i use your blog as reference to my students .

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COVID-19’s Economic Impact around the World

Key takeaways.

• Although the COVID-19 pandemic affected all parts of the world in 2020, low-, middle- and high-income nations were hit in different ways.
• In low-income countries, average excess mortality reached 34%, followed by 14% in middle-income countries and 10% in high-income ones.
• However, middle-income nations experienced the largest hit to their gross domestic product (GDP) growth, followed by high-income nations.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began in March 2020, the world economy has been affected in many ways. Poorer countries have suffered the most, but, despite their greater resources, wealthier countries have faced their own challenges. This article looks at the impact of COVID-19 in different areas of the world.

First, I put 171 nations into three groups according to per capita income: low, middle and high income. Second, I examined health statistics to show how hard-hit by the virus these nations were. Then, by comparing economic forecasts the International Monetary Fund (IMF) made in October 2019 (pre-pandemic) for 2020 with their actual values, I obtained estimates for the pandemic’s impact on growth and key economic policy variables.

Low- and high-income groups each compose 25% of the world’s countries, and the middle-income group makes up 50%. Average income per capita in 2019 was more than five times larger in the middle-income group than in the low-income group. In the high-income countries, it was almost 20 times larger.

Health Outcomes and Policies

The first table shows that COVID-19 had a significant impact on all three groups. Average excess mortality, which indicates how much larger the number of deaths was relative to previous years, was more than 34% in low-income countries, almost 14% in middle-income countries and about 10% in high-income countries. And even though poorer countries were more affected by deaths, their COVID-19 testing was much more limited given their smaller resources.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, high-income countries did more than one test per person, while low-income countries did only one test per 27 people (or 0.037 per person). Given the significant differences in testing, it is not surprising that reported cases were much higher in wealthier countries. Finally, note that there were significant differences in the progress of vaccination. As of June 2021, nearly 20% of the population in the wealthiest countries was fully vaccinated compared to about 2% in the poorest countries.

Impact on GDP Growth

COVID-19-related lockdowns were very common during 2020-21, directly impacting economic activity. The figure below shows the impact on GDP. To isolate the impact of COVID-19 from previous trends, I plotted the difference between the actual GDP growth in 2020 and the IMF forecast made in October 2019.

The immediate consequence of closing many sectors of the economy was a significant decline in GDP growth, which was as large as 8.7 percentage points for the median middle-income countries. Wealthier countries suffered a bit less, with a median of 6.4 percentage points, mainly because they began to recover before the end of 2020. The impact of COVID-19 was smaller in poorer countries because many did not have the resources to implement strict lockdowns. However, even in this group of countries, median GDP growth was 5.2 percentage points lower than expected.

SOURCES: IMF World Economic Outlook Reports (April 2021 and October 2019), Penn World Table (version 10.0) and author’s calculations.

NOTE: The COVID-19 impact is the difference between the actual gross domestic product growth rate in 2020 and the IMF forecast for it made in October 2019.

Economic Policies

Differences in GDP performance are not only related to lockdowns but also to economic policy responses. The second table contains information about six policy variables.

In particular, the first three rows present the fiscal response to the pandemic computed as the difference between the actual value in 2020 and the IMF forecast made before the pandemic in October 2019 relative to GDP. Revenue relative to GDP declined slightly in all regions, but mostly in middle-income countries, reaching more than 1 percentage point of GDP.

Expenditures relative to GDP, however, increased in middle- and high-income countries while remaining stable in low-income countries. These expenditures increased by nearly 7 percentage points of GDP in high-income countries. The more significant fiscal deficit relative to GDP implied a larger increase in net government borrowing, which reached 7 percentage points of GDP in the median high-income countries.

Finally, COVID-19 also had a clear impact on the evolution of monetary aggregates such as cash and deposits. In the table, to isolate the impact of COVID-19 from previous trends, I present the growth rate of M1 and M2 M1 generally includes physical currency, demand deposits, traveler’s checks and other checkable deposits. M2 generally includes M1 plus savings deposits, money market securities, mutual funds and other time deposits. Note that the above definitions can differ slightly by country. net of the yearly growth rates of these variables between 2017 and 2019. The pandemic implied an increase in the growth rate of monetary aggregates across countries in all income groups, but more significantly in wealthier countries.

For instance, the growth rate in M1 was over 10 percentage points larger than in the previous two years in the median high-income countries. Without a change in money demand, such an acceleration in the quantity of money would have implied increasing inflation.

However, the last row of the table shows that inflation remained stable in 2020. In fact, for middle- and high-income countries, inflation in 2020 was lower than the IMF forecast made in October 2019.

Conclusions

COVID-19 impacted health outcomes in all regions of the world. Wealthier countries responded with more testing and quicker vaccination rates. Comparing actual outcomes with pre-pandemic forecasts, I found a significant impact of the pandemic on GDP growth, which is more prominent in middle-income countries.

I conjecture that the impact on GDP growth was less significant in the poorest countries because of less restrictive lockdowns and in the wealthiest countries because of more aggressive economic policies.

• M1 generally includes physical currency, demand deposits, traveler’s checks and other checkable deposits. M2 generally includes M1 plus savings deposits, money market securities, mutual funds and other time deposits. Note that the above definitions can differ slightly by country.

Juan M. Sánchez is an economist and senior economic policy advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. He has conducted research on several topics in macroeconomics involving financial decisions by firms, households and countries. He has been at the St. Louis Fed since 2010. View more about the author and his research.

Related Topics

Views expressed in Regional Economist are not necessarily those of the St. Louis Fed or Federal Reserve System.

For the latest insights from our economists and other St. Louis Fed experts, visit On the Economy and subscribe .

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Up: Home : Study Guidance > Effective Writing and Referencing > Writing the Economics Essay

• Writing the Economics Essay

An academic rhetoric (or organisation) is important to convince a reader that you understand the topic well – poor organisation can signal muddled thinking.

Thesis – Justification – Support

This is the rhetoric used by Bray et al.

Thesis – the main concept or idea that you are proposing

Justification – the reasons why your thesis is valid

Support – evidence that backs up your justification

Essay structure – your introduction, main body, and conclusion

Box: An example

The Thesis – Justification – Support rhetoric can be applied to an individual paragraph of an essay, or on an entire essay. For example, take the essay question:

‘The accumulation of capital is sufficient for ensuring sustainable growth in per capita living standards’. Discuss.

One possible answer would be:

Thesis: if we define capital as physical capital, the accumulation of capital will lead to diminishing returns

Justification: Demonstration of the Solow model : capital accumulation can result in higher levels of income but after a certain level not higher levels of consumption per capita (due to diminishing marginal returns).

Support: examples, such as India’s heavy investment drive in the 1950s, 1960s which was associated with low levels of ‘Hindu growth’; or econometric evidence, such as that from Mankiw, Romer and Weil (1992), which supports some of the conclusions of the Solow model (but also suggests improvements, see below).

The next section of the essay would play with the assumptions of the Solow model – for example by expanding our definition of capital to include human capital (and, if you’re really trying to impress, social capital and ‘natural’ capital as well).

You might also want to discuss if technological progress (the source of per capita income growth in the Solow model) is related to capital accumulation, for example through ‘ learning by doing ‘ (Arrow, 1962)

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Economics Essay Examples

Ace Your Essay With Our Economics Essay Examples

Published on: Jun 6, 2023

Last updated on: Jan 31, 2024

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Are you struggling to understand economics essays and how to write your own?

It can be challenging to grasp the complexities of economic concepts without practical examples.

But don’t worry! 

We’ve got the solution you've been looking for. Explore quality examples that bridge the gap between theory and real-world applications. In addition, get insightful tips for writing economics essays.

So, if you're a student aiming for academic success, this blog is your go-to resource for mastering economics essays.

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What is an Economics Essay?

An economics essay is a written piece that explores economic theories, concepts, and their real-world applications. It involves analyzing economic issues, presenting arguments, and providing evidence to support ideas. 

The goal of an economics essay is to demonstrate an understanding of economic principles and the ability to critically evaluate economic topics.

Why Write an Economics Essay?

Writing an economics essay serves multiple purposes:

• Demonstrate Understanding: Showcasing your comprehension of economic concepts and their practical applications.
• Develop Critical Thinking: Cultivating analytical skills to evaluate economic issues from different perspectives.
• Apply Theory to Real-World Contexts: Bridging the gap between economic theory and real-life scenarios.
• Enhance Research and Analysis Skills: Improving abilities to gather and interpret economic data.
• Prepare for Academic and Professional Pursuits: Building a foundation for success in future economics-related endeavors.

Paper Due? Why Suffer? That's our Job!

If you’re wondering, ‘how do I write an economics essay?’, consulting an example essay might be a good option for you. Here are some economics essay examples:

Short Essay About Economics

A Level Economics Essay Examples

Here is an essay on economics a level structure:

Band 6 Economics Essay Examples

Here are some downloadable economics essays:

Economics essay pdf

Economics essay introduction

Economics Extended Essay Examples

In an economics extended essay, students have the opportunity to delve into a specific economic topic of interest. They are required to conduct an in-depth analysis of this topic and compile a lengthy essay. 

Here are some potential economics extended essay question examples:

• How does foreign direct investment impact economic growth in developing countries?
• What are the factors influencing consumer behavior and their effects on market demand for sustainable products?
• To what extent does government intervention in the form of minimum wage policies affect employment levels and income inequality?
• What are the economic consequences of implementing a carbon tax to combat climate change?
• How does globalization influence income distribution and the wage gap in developed economies?

IB Economics Extended Essay Examples 

IB Economics Extended Essay Examples

Economics Extended Essay Topic Examples

Extended Essay Research Question Examples Economics

Tips for Writing an Economics Essay

Writing an economics essay requires specific expertise and skills. So, it's important to have some tips up your sleeve to make sure your essay is of high quality:

• Start with a Clear Thesis Statement: It defines your essay's focus and argument. This statement should be concise, to the point, and present the crux of your essay.
• Conduct Research and Gather Data: Collect facts and figures from reliable sources such as academic journals, government reports, and reputable news outlets. Use this data to support your arguments and analysis and compile a literature review.
• Use Economic Theories and Models: These help you to support your arguments and provide a framework for your analysis. Make sure to clearly explain these theories and models so that the reader can follow your reasoning.
• Analyze the Micro and Macro Aspects: Consider all angles of the topic. This means examining how the issue affects individuals, businesses, and the economy as a whole.
• Use Real-World Examples: Practical examples and case studies help to illustrate your points. This can make your arguments more relatable and understandable.
• Consider the Policy Implications: Take into account the impacts of your analysis. What are the potential solutions to the problem you're examining? How might different policies affect the outcomes you're discussing?
• Use Graphs and Charts: These help to illustrate your data and analysis. These visual aids can help make your arguments more compelling and easier to understand.
• Proofread and Edit: Make sure to proofread your essay carefully for grammar and spelling errors. In economics, precision and accuracy are essential, so errors can undermine the credibility of your analysis.

These tips can help make your essay writing journey a breeze. Tailor them to your topic to make sure you end with a well-researched and accurate economics essay.

To wrap it up , writing an economics essay requires a combination of solid research, analytical thinking, and effective communication. 

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Barbara is a highly educated and qualified author with a Ph.D. in public health from an Ivy League university. She has spent a significant amount of time working in the medical field, conducting a thorough study on a variety of health issues. Her work has been published in several major publications.

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What Is an Economy?

Understanding economies, studying economies, economic indicators, history of the concept of economy, the bottom line, economy: what it is, types of economies, economic indicators.

An economy is a complex system of interrelated production, consumption, and exchange activities, which ultimately determine how resources are allocated among participants. The production, consumption, and distribution of goods and services combine to fulfill the needs of those living and operating within the economy.

An economy can encompass a nation, a region, a single industry, or even just one family.

Key Takeaways

• An economy is a system of interrelated production and consumption activities that ultimately determine the allocation of resources within a group.
• The production and consumption of goods and services fulfills the needs of those living and operating within an economy.
• Market-based economies, also called free market economies, are self-regulated, allowing goods to be produced and distributed in response to demand from consumers.
• Command-based economies are regulated by a government body that determines the goods that are produced, their quantities, and their prices.
• In the modern world, few economies are purely market-based or command-based.

Investopedia / Alex Dos Diaz

An economy encompasses all of the activities related to the production, consumption, and trade of goods and services in an entity, whether the entity is a nation or a small town.

No two economies are identical. Each is formed according to its own resources, culture, laws, history, and geography. Each evolves according to the choices and actions of the participants.

These decisions are made through some combination of market transactions and collective or hierarchical decision-making.

Capitalism is characterized by a market-based economy. Communism is characterized by a command-based economy.

Types of Economies

In the modern world, few nations are purely market-based or purely command-based. But most lean toward one or the other of these models.

Market-Based Economies

Market-based or "free market" economies allow people and businesses to freely exchange goods and services according to supply and demand .

The United States is mostly a market economy . Producers determine what’s sold and produced, and what prices to charge. If they expect to succeed, they will produce what consumers want and charge what consumers are willing to pay.  

Through these decisions, the laws of supply and demand determine prices and total production. If consumer demand for a specific product increases, production tends to increase to satisfy the demand. The increased demand causes prices to rise until consumers balk and cut back on their purchases. Demand for the product will then decline and prices will decline with it.

This constant tug of supply and demand allows a market economy a tendency to naturally balance itself. As the prices in one sector rise with demand, the money and labor needed to fill that demand shift to those places where they're needed.

Command-Based Economies

Command-based economies depend on a central government that controls the production levels, pricing, and distribution of goods.

In such a system, the government owns industries deemed essential on behalf of the consumers who use them. Competition among companies is discouraged or banned. Prices are controlled.

Communism requires a command-based economy. Contemporary examples include Cuba and North Korea.

A command-based economy attempts to supersede the workings of supply and demand.

Mixed Economies

Pure market economies rarely exist in the modern world since there's usually some degree of government intervention or central planning. Even the United States could be considered a mixed economy . It may not mandate production but it has ways to influence it. For example:

• In late 2021, President Joe Biden ordered 50 million gallons of oil released from the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserves with the stated aim of forcing gasoline prices lower by increasing its supply.
• In 2022 and 2023, the Federal Reserve imposed a series of interest rate increases on the nation's banks. The purpose was to raise interest rates throughout the economy in order to reduce demand for loans and therefore reduce inflation in the costs of goods and services.

In truth, most of the world's developed economies mix market-based and command-based models.

China had a command economy only until 1978, when it began a series of reforms that encouraged private enterprise.

The study of economies and the factors affecting economies is called economics. The discipline of economics can be broken into two major areas of focus: microeconomics and macroeconomics.

Microeconomics

Microeconomics studies the behavior of individual people and businesses in order to understand why they make the economic decisions they do and how these decisions affect the larger economic system.

Microeconomics studies how a particular value is attached to a product or service. It examines how individuals coordinate and cooperate with each other in business.

Microeconomics tends to focus on economic tendencies, such as how individual choices and actions impact changes in production.

Clearly, principles of psychology and marketing influence microeconomics.

Macroeconomics

As the name implies, macroeconomics studies the big picture.

Macroeconomics includes the study of economy-wide factors such as the effect of rising prices or inflation on the economy. It seeks to track and understand the financial indicators that clarify an economy's success or failure over time, such as gross domestic product (GDP), changes in unemployment , and consumer spending.

In short, macroeconomics studies how the economy as a whole behaves.

As noted above, macroeconomics is the study of the big picture and that picture is incomplete without a set of economic indicators . These are some of the most closely-watched of those indicators.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

Gross domestic product (GDP) is the total value of all of the completed goods and services produced by an economy during a period of one year.

The gross domestic product of the United States reached $27.94 trillion in 2023.

Unemployment

In the U.S., the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes a monthly unemployment report that breaks down how many people are working, the average number of hours they are working, and their average earnings. This is used to produce the unemployment rate.

The report estimates the number of people who are working for pay during a given period. More importantly, the number is tracked over time in order to determine whether unemployment is worsening.

Inflation (or Deflation)

Inflation in consumer prices is measured and tracked so that problems in the economy can be pinpointed. If the rate of inflation is outpacing the rate of income growth, the economy is in trouble. Inflation can be negative, too; this is called deflation , but it is relatively rare.

BLS publishes a key inflation metric known as the Consumer Price Index , which tracks the costs of goods and services from month to month. It breaks down its report into the vital areas of consumer spending, such as food, energy, and rent costs. Those numbers determine the rate of inflation.

Balance of Trade

An economy's balance of trade is a comparison of the amount of money that is spent on imports of goods and services and the amount of money it earns on goods and services it exports. It is measured primarily by recording all of the products that pass through the customs office of a country.

A nation achieves a positive balance of trade when it exports more than it imports. It has a negative balance of trade when it buys more than it sells.

Neither is necessarily good or bad. A nation may have a negative balance of trade because foreign businesses are heavily investing in its future. A nation with a positive balance of trade may have protectionist policies in place that could hurt it in the long run.

The U.S. had a balance of trade deficit in 2023 of about $779.8 billion, down from $945.3 billion the previous year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

The word economy derives from the Greek term for household management ("oikonomia") and the word is still used in that context.

Economics as an area of study was touched on by philosophers in ancient Greece, notably Aristotle, but the modern study of economics began in 18th-century Europe, particularly in Scotland and France.

Development of Modern Economics

The Scottish philosopher and economist Adam Smith , who in 1776 wrote a landmark book called "The Wealth of Nations," was thought of in his own time as a moral philosopher. He and his contemporaries traced the evolution of economies from prehistoric bartering systems to money-driven and eventually credit-driven economies. 

During the 19th century, the development of technology and the growth of international trade created stronger ties among countries, a process that accelerated into the Great Depression and World War II. After 50 years of the Cold War, the late 20th and early 21st centuries have seen a renewed globalization of economies.

What Is Economics?

Economics is a branch of the sciences that seeks to understand the way a population functions by studying the way its economy functions. Every group of people develops a survival plan based on shared labor and resources. How they do that, and how well they succeed at it, is central focus of the study of economics.

What Is Macroeconomics vs. Microeconomics?

Macroeconomics is the study of the overall performance of an economy. It evaluates the stability and progress of an economy over time by analysis of key indicators. These include GDP, employment, inflation or deflation, and the balance of trade.

Microeconomics is the study of the behavior of the individual consumers and businesses that make up the economy. Their motivations, habits, and behaviors are studied to determine whether an economy is functioning in their best interests.

What Is Economics in Real Life?

All of us participate in economies. We contribute something to the whole by producing or helping to produce a product or offering a service. In return, we receive money that allows us to buy the goods and services that we can't produce for ourselves.

An economy is system of production and consumption activities that determine the allocation of limited resources. Every individual within an economy contributes to it in some form. In return, each expects a share of the goods and services provided by other members of the community.

The White House. " President Biden Announced Release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as Part of Ongoing Efforts to Lower Prices and Address Lack of Supply Around the World ."

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. " Open Market Operations ."

World Bank. " The World Bank in China ."

U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. " Gross Domestic Product, Fourth Quarter and Year 2023 (Second Estimate). "

U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. " 2023 Trade Gap is $779.8 Billion. "

• Economics Defined with Types, Indicators, and Systems 1 of 33
• Economy: What It Is, Types of Economies, Economic Indicators 2 of 33
• A Brief History of Economics 3 of 33
• Is Economics a Science? 4 of 33
• Finance vs. Economics: What's the Difference? 5 of 33
• Macroeconomics Definition, History, and Schools of Thought 6 of 33
• Microeconomics Definition, Uses, and Concepts 7 of 33
• 4 Economic Concepts Consumers Need To Know 8 of 33
• Law of Supply and Demand in Economics: How It Works 9 of 33
• Demand-Side Economics Definition, Examples of Policies 10 of 33
• Supply-Side Theory: Definition and Comparison to Demand-Side 11 of 33
• What Is a Market Economy and How Does It Work? 12 of 33
• Command Economy: Definition, How It Works, and Characteristics 13 of 33
• Economic Value: Definition, Examples, Ways To Estimate 14 of 33
• Keynesian Economics: Theory and How It's Used 15 of 33
• What Is Social Economics, and How Does It Impact Society? 16 of 33
• Economic Indicator: Definition and How to Interpret 17 of 33
• Top 10 U.S. Economic Indicators 18 of 33
• Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Formula and How to Use It 19 of 33
• What Is GDP and Why Is It So Important to Economists and Investors? 20 of 33
• Consumer Spending: Definition, Measurement, and Importance 21 of 33
• Retail Sales: Definition, Measurement, and Use As an Economic Indicator 22 of 33
• Job Market: Definition, Measurement, Example 23 of 33
• The Top 25 Economies in the World 24 of 33
• What Are Some Examples of Free Market Economies? 25 of 33
• Is the United States a Market Economy or a Mixed Economy? 26 of 33
• Primary Drivers of the Chinese Economy 27 of 33
• Japan Inc.: What It is, How It Works, History 28 of 33
• The Fundamentals of How India Makes Its Money 29 of 33
• European Union (EU): What It Is, Countries, History, Purpose 30 of 33
• The German Economic Miracle Post WWII 31 of 33
• The Economy of the United Kingdom 32 of 33
• How the North Korean Economy Works 33 of 33

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• Elsevier - PMC COVID-19 Collection

A critical analysis of the impacts of COVID-19 on the global economy and ecosystems and opportunities for circular economy strategies

T. ibn-mohammed.

a Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG), The University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, United Kingdom

K.B. Mustapha

b Faculty of Engineering and Science, University of Nottingham (Malaysia Campus), Semenyih, Selangor43500, Malaysia

c School of The Built Environment and Architecture, London South Bank University, London SE1 0AA, United Kingdom

K.A. Babatunde

d Faculty of Economics and Management, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi, Selangor43600, Malaysia

e Department of Economics, Faculty of Management Sciences, Al-Hikmah University, Ilorin, Nigeria

D.D. Akintade

f School of Life Sciences, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2UH United Kingdom

g Kent Business School, University of Kent, Canterbury CT2 7PE, United Kingdom

h Faculty of Economics, Kyushu University, 744 Motooka, Nishi-ku, Fukuoka 819-0395, Japan

M.M. Ndiaye

i Department of Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, American University of Sharjah, Sharjah, UAE

F.A. Yamoah

j Department of Management, Birkbeck University of London, London WC1E 7JL United Kingdom

k Sheffield University Management School (SUMS), The University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 1FL, United Kingdom

• • COVID-19 presents unprecedented challenge to all facets of human endeavour.
• • A critical review of the negative and positive impacts of the pandemic is presented.
• • The danger of relying on pandemic-driven benefits to achieving SDGs is highlighted.
• • The pandemic and its interplay with circular economy (CE) approaches is examined.
• • Sector-specific CE recommendations in a resilient post-COVID-19 world are outlined.

The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on the 11th of March 2020, but the world is still reeling from its aftermath. Originating from China, cases quickly spread across the globe, prompting the implementation of stringent measures by world governments in efforts to isolate cases and limit the transmission rate of the virus. These measures have however shattered the core sustaining pillars of the modern world economies as global trade and cooperation succumbed to nationalist focus and competition for scarce supplies. Against this backdrop, this paper presents a critical review of the catalogue of negative and positive impacts of the pandemic and proffers perspectives on how it can be leveraged to steer towards a better, more resilient low-carbon economy. The paper diagnosed the danger of relying on pandemic-driven benefits to achieving sustainable development goals and emphasizes a need for a decisive, fundamental structural change to the dynamics of how we live. It argues for a rethink of the present global economic growth model, shaped by a linear economy system and sustained by profiteering and energy-gulping manufacturing processes, in favour of a more sustainable model recalibrated on circular economy (CE) framework. Building on evidence in support of CE as a vehicle for balancing the complex equation of accomplishing profit with minimal environmental harms, the paper outlines concrete sector-specific recommendations on CE-related solutions as a catalyst for the global economic growth and development in a resilient post-COVID-19 world.

1. Introduction

The world woke up to a perilous reality on the 11th of March, 2020 when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared novel coronavirus (COVID-19) a pandemic ( Sohrabi et al., 2020 ; WHO, 2020a ). Originating from Wuhan, China, cases rapidly spread to Japan, South Korea, Europe and the United States as it reached global proportions. Towards the formal pandemic declaration, substantive economic signals from different channels, weeks earlier, indicated the world was leaning towards an unprecedented watershed in our lifetime, if not in human history ( Gopinath, 2020 ). In series of revelatory reports ( Daszak, 2012 ; Ford et al., 2009 ; Webster, 1997 ), experts across professional cadres had long predicted a worldwide pandemic would strain the elements of the global supply chains and demands, thereby igniting a cross-border economic disaster because of the highly interconnected world we now live in. By all accounts, the emerging havoc wrought by the pandemic exceeded the predictions in those commentaries. At the time of writing, the virus has killed over 800,000 people worldwide ( JHU, 2020 ), disrupted means of livelihoods, cost trillions of dollars while global recession looms ( Naidoo and Fisher, 2020 ). In efforts to isolate cases and limit the transmission rate of the virus, while mitigating the pandemic, countries across the globe implemented stringent measures such as mandatory national lockdown and border closures.

These measures have shattered the core sustaining pillars of modern world economies. Currently, the economic shock arising from this pandemic is still being weighed. Data remains in flux, government policies oscillate, and the killer virus seeps through nations, affecting production, disrupting supply chains and unsettling the financial markets ( Bachman, 2020 ; Sarkis et al., 2020 ). Viewed holistically, the emerging pieces of evidence indicate we are at a most consequential moment in history where a rethink of sustainable pathways for the planet has become pertinent. Despite this, the measures imposed by governments have also led to some “accidental” positive effects on the environment and natural ecosystems. As a result, going forward, a fundamental change to human bio-physical activities on earth now appears on the spectrum of possibility ( Anderson et al., 2020 ). However, as highlighted by Naidoo and Fisher (2020) , our reliance on globalization and economic growth as drivers of green investment and sustainable development is no longer realistic. The adoption of circular economy (CE) – an industrial economic model that satisfies the multiple roles of decoupling of economic growth from resource consumption, waste management and wealth creation – has been touted to be a viable solution.

No doubt, addressing the public health consequences of COVID-19 is the top priority, but the nature of the equally crucial economic recovery efforts necessitates some key questions as governments around the world introduce stimulus packages to aid such recovery endeavours: Should these packages focus on avenues to economic recovery and growth by thrusting business as usual into overdrive or could they be targeted towards constructing a more resilient low-carbon CE? To answer this question, this paper builds on the extant literature on public health, socio-economic and environmental dimensions of COVID-19 impacts ( Gates, 2020b ; Guerrieri et al., 2020 ; Piguillem and Shi, 2020 ; Sohrabi et al., 2020 ), and examines its interplay with CE approaches. It argues for the recalibration and a rethink of the present global economic growth model, shaped by a linear economy system and sustained by profit-before-planet and energy-intensive manufacturing processes, in favour of CE. Building on evidence in support of CE as a vehicle for optimizing the complex equation of accomplishing profit while minimizing environmental damage, the paper outlines tangible sector-specific recommendations on CE-related solutions as a catalyst for the global economic boom in a resilient post-COVID-19 world. It is conceived that the “accidental” or the pandemic-induced CE strategies and behavioural changes that ensued during coronavirus crisis can be leveraged or locked in, to provide opportunities for both future resilience and competitiveness.

In light of the above, the paper is structured as follows. In Section 2 , the methodological framework, which informed the critical literature review is presented. A brief overview of the historical context of previous epidemics and pandemics is presented in Section 3 as a requisite background on how pandemics have shaped human history and economies and why COVID-19 is different. In Section 4 , an overview of the impacts (both negative and positive) of COVID-19 in terms of policy frameworks, global economy, ecosystems and sustainability are presented. The role of the CE as a constructive change driver is detailed in Section 5 . In Section 6 , opportunities for CE after COVID-19 as well as sector-based recommendations on strategies and measures for advancing CE are presented, leading to the summary and concluding remarks in Section 7.

A literature review exemplifies a conundrum because an effective one cannot be conducted unless a problem statement is established ( Ibn-Mohammed, 2017 ). Yet, a literature search plays an integral role in establishing many research problems. In this paper, the approach taken to overcome this conundrum involves searching and reviewing the existing literature in the specific area of study (i.e. impacts of COVID-19 on global economy and ecosystems in the context of CE). This was used to develop the theoretical framework from which the current study emerges and adopting this to establish a conceptual framework which then becomes the basis of the current review. The paper adopts the critical literature review (CLR) approach given that it entails the assessment, critique and synthetisation of relevant literature regarding the topic under investigation in a manner that facilitates the emergence of new theoretical frameworks and perspectives from a wide array of different fields ( Snyder, 2019 ). CLR suffers from an inherent weakness in terms of subjectivity towards literature selection ( Snyder, 2019 ), prompting Grant and Booth (2009) to submit that systematic literature review (SLR) could mitigate this bias given its strict criteria in literature selection that facilitates a detailed analysis of a specific line of investigation. However, a number of authors ( Morrison et al., 2012 ; Paez, 2017 ) have reported that SLR does not allow for effective synthesis of academic and grey literature which are not indexed in popular academic search engines like Google Scholar, Web-of-Science and Scopus. The current review explores the impacts of COVID-19 on the global economy and ecosystems and opportunities for circular economy strategies, rather than investigating a specific aspect of the pandemic. As such, adopting a CLR approach is favoured in realising the goal of the paper as it allows for the inclusion of a wide range of perspectives and theoretical underpinnings from different sources ( Greenhalgh et al., 2018 ; Snyder, 2019 ).

Considering the above, this paper employed archival data consisting of journal articles, documented news in the media, expert reports, government and relevant stakeholders’ policy documents, published expert interviews and policy feedback literature that are relevant to COVID-19 and the concept of CE. To identify the relevant archival data, we focused on several practical ways of literature searching using appropriate keywords that are relevant to this work including impact (positive and negative) of COVID-19, circular economy, economic resilience, sustainability, supply chain resilience, climate change, etc. After identifying articles and relevant documents, their contents were examined to determine inclusions and exclusions based on their relevance to the topic under investigation. Ideas generated from reading the resulting papers from the search were then used to develop a theoretical framework and a research problem statement, which forms the basis for the CLR. The impact analysis for the study was informed by the I = P × A × T model whereby the “impact” (I) of any group or country on the environment is a function of the interaction of its population size (P), per capita affluence (A), expressed in terms of real per capita GDP, as a valid approximation of the availability of goods and services and technology (T) involved in supporting each unit of consumption.

As shown in the methodological framework in Fig. 1 , the paper starts with a brief review of the impacts of historical plagues to shed more light on the link between the past and the unprecedented time, which then led to an overview of the positive and negative impacts of COVID-19. The role of CE as a vehicle for constructive change in the light of COVID-19 was then explored followed by the synthesis, analysis and reflections on the information gathered during the review, leading to sector-specific CE strategy recommendations in a post-COVID-19 world.

Methodological framework for the critical literature review.

3. A brief account of the socio-economic impacts of historical outbreaks

At a minimum, pandemics result in the twin crisis of stressing the healthcare infrastructure and straining the economic system. However, beyond pandemics, several prior studies have long noted that depending on latency, transmission rate, and geographic spread, any form of communicable disease outbreak is a potent vector of localized economic hazards ( Bloom and Cadarette, 2019 ; Bloom and Canning, 2004 ; Hotez et al., 2014 ). History is littered with a catalogue of such outbreaks in the form of endemics, epidemics, plagues and pandemics. In many instances, some of these outbreaks have hastened the collapse of empires, overwhelmed the healthcare infrastructure, brought social unrest, triggered economic dislocations and exposed the fragility of the world economy, with a knock-on effect on many sectors. Indeed, in the initial few months of COVID-19 pandemic, it has become more evident that natural, accidental or intentional biological threats or outbreak in any country now poses an unquantifiable risk to global health and the world economy ( Bretscher et al., 2020 ).

Saunders-Hastings and Krewski (2016) reported that there have been several pandemics over the past 100 years. A short but inexhaustible list of outbreaks of communicable diseases include ‘the great plague’ ( Duncan-Jones, 1996 ; Littman and Littman, 1973 ), the Justinian plague ( Wagner et al., 2014 ), the Black Death ( Horrox, 2013 ), the Third Plague pandemic ( Bramanti et al., 2019 ; Tan et al., 2002 ), the Spanish flu ( Gibbs et al., 2001 ; Trilla et al., 2008 ), HIV/AIDS ( De Cock et al., 2012 ), SARS ( Lee and McKibbin, 2004 ), dengue ( Murray et al., 2013 ), and Ebola ( Baseler et al., 2017 ), among others. The potency of each of these outbreaks varies. Consequently, their economic implications differ according to numerous retrospective analyses ( Bloom and Cadarette, 2019 ; Bloom and Canning, 2004 ; Hotez et al., 2014 ). For instance, the Ebola epidemic of 2013-2016 created socio-economic impact to the tune of $53 billion across West Africa, plummeted Sierra Leone's GDP in 2015 by 20% and that of Liberia by 8% between 2013 and 2014, despite the decline in death rates across the same timeframe ( Fernandes, 2020 ).

As the world slipped into the current inflection point, some of the historical lessons from earlier pandemics remain salutary, even if the world we live in now significantly differs from those of earlier period ( McKee and Stuckler, 2020 ). Several factors differentiate the current socio-economic crisis of COVID-19 from the previous ones ( Baker et al., 2020 ), which means direct simple comparisons with past global pandemics are impossible ( Fernandes, 2020 ). Some of the differentiating factors include the fact that COVID-19 is a global pandemic and it is creating knock-on effects across supply chains given that the world has become much more integrated due to globalisation and advancements in technology ( McKenzie, 2020 ). Moreover, the world has witnessed advances in science, medicine and engineering. The modest number of air travellers during past pandemics delayed the global spread of the virus unlike now where global travel has increased tremendously. From an economic impact perspective, interest rates are at record lows and there is a great imbalance between demand and supply of commodities ( Fernandes, 2020 ). More importantly, many of the countries that are hard hit by the current pandemic are not exclusively the usual low-middle income countries, but those at the pinnacle of the pyramid of manufacturing and global supply chains. Against this backdrop, a review of the impact of COVID-19 is presented in the next section.

4. COVID-19: Policy frameworks, global economy, ecosystems and sustainability

4.1. evaluation of policy frameworks to combat covid-19.

The strategies and policies adopted by different countries to cope with COVID-19 have varied over the evolving severity and lifetime of the pandemic during which resources have been limited ( Siow et al., 2020 ). It is instructive that countries accounting for 65% of global manufacturing and exports (i.e. China, USA, Korea, Japan, France, Italy, and UK) were some of the hardest to be hit by COVID-19 ( Baldwin and Evenett, 2020 ). Given the level of unpreparedness and lack of resilience of hospitals, numerous policy emphases have gone into sourcing for healthcare equipment such as personal protective equipment (PPE) and ventilators ( Ranney et al., 2020 ) due to global shortages. For ventilators, in particular, frameworks for rationing them along with bed spaces have had to be developed to optimise their usage ( White and Lo, 2020 ). Other industries have also been affected, with shocks to their existence, productivity and profitability ( Danieli and Olmstead-Rumsey, 2020 ) including the CE-sensitive materials extraction and mining industries that have been hit by disruption to their operations and global prices of commodities ( Laing, 2020 ).

As highlighted in subsequent sub-sections, one of the psychological impacts of COVID-19 is panic buying ( Arafat et al., 2020 ), which happens due to uncertainties at national levels (e.g. for scarce equipment) and at individual levels (e.g. for everyday consumer products). In both instances, the fragility, profiteering and unsustainability of the existing supply chain model have been exposed ( Spash, 2020 ). In fact, Sarkis et al. (2020) questioned whether the global economy could afford to return to the just-in-time (JIT) supply chain framework favoured by the healthcare sector, given its apparent shortcomings in dealing with much needed supplies. The sub-section that follow examines some of the macro and micro economic ramifications of COVID-19.

4.1.1. Macroeconomic impacts: Global productions, exports, and imports

One challenge faced by the healthcare industry is that existing best practices, in countries like the USA (e.g. JIT macroeconomic framework), do not incentivise the stockpiling of essential medical equipment ( Solomon et al., 2020 ). Although vast sums were budgeted, some governments (e.g. UK, India and USA) needed to take extraordinary measures to protect their supply chain to the extent that manufacturers like Ford and Dyson ventured into the ventilator design/production market ( Iyengar et al., 2020 ). The US, in particular activated the Defense Production Act to compel car manufacturers to shift focus on ventilator production ( American Geriatrics Society, 2020 ; Solomon et al., 2020 ) due to the high cost and shortage of this vital equipment. Hospitals and suppliers in the US were also forced to enter the global market due to the chronic shortfall of N95 masks as well as to search for lower priced equipment ( Solomon et al., 2020 ). Interestingly, the global production of these specialist masks is thought to be led by China ( Baldwin and Evenett, 2020 ; Paxton et al., 2020 ) where COVID-19 broke out, with EU's supply primarily from Malaysia and Japan ( Stellinger et al., 2020 ). Such was the level of shortage that the US was accused of ‘pirating’ medical equipment supplies from Asian countries intended for EU countries ( Aubrecht et al., 2020 ).

France and Germany followed suit with similar in-ward looking policy and the EU itself imposed restrictions on the exportation of PPEs, putting many hitherto dependent countries at risk ( Bown, 2020 ). Unsurprisingly, China and the EU saw it fit to reduce or waive import tariffs on raw materials and PPE, respectively ( Stellinger et al., 2020 ). Going forward, the life-threatening consequences of logistics failures and misallocation of vital equipment and products could breathe new life and impetus to technologies like Blockchain, RFID and IoT for increased transparency and traceability ( Sarkis et al., 2020 ). Global cooperation and scenario planning will always be needed to complement these technologies. In this regard, the EU developed a joint procurement framework to reduce competition amongst member states, while in the US, where states had complained that federal might was used to interfere with orders, a ventilator exchange program was developed ( Aubrecht et al., 2020 ). However, even with trade agreements and cooperative frameworks, the global supply chain cannot depend on imports – or donations ( Evenett, 2020 ) for critical healthcare equipment and this realisation opens doors for localisation of production with consequences for improvements in environmental and social sustainability ( Baldwin and Evenett, 2020 ). This can be seen in the case of N95 masks which overnight became in such high demand that airfreights by private and commercial planes were used to deliver them as opposed to traditional container shipping ( Brown, 2020 ).

As detailed in forthcoming sections, a significant reduction in emissions linked to traditional shipping was observed, yet there was an increase in use of airfreighting due to desperation and urgency of demand. Nevertheless, several countries are having to rethink their global value chains ( Fig. 2 ) as a result of realities highlighted by COVID-19 pandemic ( Javorcik, 2020 ). This is primarily because national interests and protectionism have been a by-product of COVID-19 pandemic and also because many eastern European/Mediterranean countries have a relative advantage with respect to Chinese exports. As shown in Fig. 2 , the global export share which each of these countries has, relative to China's share of the same exports (x-axis) is measured against the economies of countries subscribing to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) (y-axis). For each product, the ideal is to have a large circle towards the top right-hand corner of the chart.

A summary of how some Eastern European / Mediterranean countries have advantages over China on certain exports – based on the Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System from 2018, where export volume is represented by dot sizes in millions of USD; Source: Javorcik (2020) .

4.1.2. Microeconomic impacts: Consumer behaviour

For long, there has been a mismatch between consumerist tendencies and biophysical realities ( Spash, 2020 ). However, COVID-19 has further exacerbated the need to reflect on the social impacts of individual lifestyles. The behaviour of consumers, in many countries, was at some point alarmist with a lot of panic buying of food and sanitary products ( Sim et al., 2020 ). At private level, consumer sentiment is also changing. Difficult access to goods and services has forced citizens to re-evaluate purchasing patterns and needs, with focus pinned on the most essential items ( Company, 2020 ; Lyche, 2020 ). Spash (2020) argued that technological obsolescence of modern products brought about by rapid innovation and individual consumerism is also likely to affect the linear economy model which sees, for instance, mobile phones having an average life time of four years (two years in the US), assuming their manufacture/repair services are constrained by economic shutdown and lockdowns ( Schluep, 2009 ). On the other hand, a sector like healthcare, which could benefit from mass production and consumerism of vital equipment, is plagued by patenting. Most medical equipment are patented and the issue of a 3D printer's patent infringement in Italy led to calls for ‘Open Source Ventilators’ and ‘Good Samaritan Laws’ to help deal with global health emergencies like COVID-19 ( Pearce, 2020 ). It is plausible that such initiatives/policies could help address the expensive, scarce, high-skill and material-intensive production of critical equipment, via cottage industry production.

For perspective, it should be noted that production capacity of PPE (even for the ubiquitous facemasks) have been shown by COVID-19 to be limited across many countries ( Dargaville et al., 2020 ) with some countries having to ration facemask production and distribution in factories ( San Juan, 2020 ). Unsurprisingly, the homemade facemask industry has not only emerged for the protection of mass populations as reported by Livingston et al. (2020) , it has become critical for addressing shortages ( Rubio-Romero et al., 2020 ) as well as being part of a post-lockdown exit strategy ( Allison et al., 2020 ). A revival of cottage industry production of equipment and basic but essential items like facemasks could change the landscape of global production for decades, probably leading to an attenuation of consumerist tendencies.This pandemic will also impact on R&D going forward, given the high likelihood that recession will cause companies to take short-term views, and cancel long and medium-term R&D in favour of short-term product development and immediate cash flow/profit as was certainly the case for automotive and aerospace sectors in previous recessions.

4.2. Overview of the negative impacts of COVID-19

The negative effects have ranged from a severe contraction of GDP in many countries to multi-dimensional environmental and social issues across the strata of society. In many respects, socio-economic activities came to a halt as: millions were quarantined; borders were shut; schools were closed; car/airline, manufacturing and travel industries crippled; trade fairs/sporting/entertainment events cancelled, and unemployment claims reached millions while the international tourist locations were deserted; and, nationalism and protectionism re-surfaced ( Baker et al., 2020 ; Basilaia and Kvavadze, 2020 ; Devakumar et al., 2020 ; Kraemer et al., 2020 ; Thunstrom et al., 2020 ; Toquero, 2020 ). In the subsections that follow, an overview of some of these negative impacts on the global economy, environment, and society is presented.

4.2.1. Negative macroeconomic impact of COVID-19

Undoubtedly, COVID-19 first and foremost, constitutes a ferocious pandemic and a human tragedy that swept across the globe, resulting in a massive health crisis ( WHO, 2020b ), disproportionate social order ( UN DESA, 2020 ), and colossal economic loss ( IMF, 2020 ). It has created a substantial negative impact on the global economy, for which governments, firms and individuals scramble for adjustments ( Fernandes, 2020 ; Pinner et al., 2020 ; Sarkis et al., 2020 ; Sohrabi et al., 2020 ; Van Bavel et al., 2020 ). Indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic has distorted the world's operating assumptions, revealing the absolute lack of resilience of the dominant economic model to respond to unplanned shocks and crises ( Pinner et al., 2020 ). It has exposed the weakness of over-centralization of the complex global supply and production chains networks and the fragility of global economies, whilst highlighting weak links across industries( Fernandes, 2020 ; Guan et al., 2020 ; Sarkis et al., 2020 ). This has had a direct impact on employment and heightened the risk of food insecurity for millions due to lockdown and border restrictions ( Guerrieri et al., 2020 ). To some extent, some of the interventional measures introduced by governments across the world have resulted in the flattening of the COVID-19 curve (as shown in Fig. 3 ). This has helped in preventing healthcare systems from getting completely overwhelmed ( JHU, 2020 ), although as at the time of writing this paper, new cases are still being reported in different parts of the globe. Fernandes (2020) and McKibbin and Fernando (2020) reported thatthe socio-economic impact of COVID-19 will be felt for many months to come.

Daily confirmed new COVID-19 cases of the current 10 most affected countries based on a 5-day moving average. Valid as of August 31st, 2020 at 11:46 PM EDT ( JHU, 2020 ).

Guan et al. (2020) submitted that how badly and prolonged the recession rattles the world depends on how well and quickly the depth of the socio-economic implications of the pandemic is understood. IMF (2020) reported that in an unprecedented circumstance (except during the Great Depression), all economies including developed, emerging, and even developing will likely experience recession. In its April World Economic Outlook, IMF (2020) reversed its early global economic growth forecast from 3.3% to -3 %, an unusual downgrade of 6.3% within three months. This makes the pandemic a global economic shock like no other since the Great Depression and it has already surpassed the global financial crisis of 2009 as depicted in Fig. 4 . Economies in the advanced countries are expected to contract by -6.1% while recession in emerging and developing economies is projected (with caution) to be less adverse compared to the developed nations with China and India expected to record positive growth by the end of 2020. The cumulative GDP loss over the next year from COVID-19 could be around $9 trillion ( IMF, 2020 ).

Socioeconomic impact of COVID-19 lockdown: (a) Comparison of global economic recession due to COVID-19 and the 2009 global financial crisis; (b) Advanced economies, emerging and developing economies in recession; (c) the major economies in recession; (d) the cumulative economic output loss over 2020 and 2021. Note: Real GDP growth is used for economic growth, as year-on-year for per cent change ( IMF, 2020 ).

With massive job loss and excessive income inequality, global poverty is likely to increase for the first time since 1998 ( Mahler et al., 2020 ). It is estimated that around 49 million people could be pushed into extreme poverty due to COVID-19 with Sub-Sahara Africa projected to be hit hardest. The United Nations’ Department of Economic and Social Affairs concluded that COVID-19 pandemic may also increase exclusion, inequality, discrimination and global unemployment in the medium and long term, if not properly addressed using the most effective policy instruments ( UN DESA, 2020 ). The adoption of detailed universal social protection systems as a form of automatic stabilizers, can play a long-lasting role in mitigating the prevalence of poverty and protecting workers ( UN DESA, 2020 ).

4.2.2. Impact of COVID-19 on global supply chain and international trade

COVID-19 negatively affects the global economy by reshaping supply chains and sectoral activities. Supply chains naturally suffer from fragmentation and geographical dispersion. However, globalisation has rendered them more complex and interdependent, making them vulnerable to disruptions. Based on an analysis by the U.S. Institute for Supply Management, 75% of companies have reported disruptions in their supply chain ( Fernandes, 2020 ), unleashing crisis that emanated from lack of understanding and flexibility of the several layers of their global supply chains and lack of diversification in their sourcing strategies ( McKenzie, 2020 ). These disruptions will impact both exporting countries (i.e. lack of output for their local firms) and importing countries (i.e. unavailability of raw materials) ( Fernandes, 2020 ). Consequently, this will lead to the creation of momentary “manufacturing deserts” in which the output of a country, region or city drops significantly, turning into a restricted zone to source anything other than essentials like food items and drugs ( McKenzie, 2020 ). This is due to the knock-on effect of China's rising dominance and importance in the global supply chain and economy ( McKenzie, 2020 ). As a consequence of COVID-19, the World Trade Organization (WTO) projected a 32% decline in global trade ( Fernandes, 2020 ). For instance, global trade has witnessed a huge downturn due to reduced Chinese imports and the subsequent fall in global economic activities. This is evident because as of 25 th March 2020, global trade fell to over 4% contracting for only the second time since the mid-1980s ( McKenzie, 2020 ). Fig. 5 shows a pictorial representation of impact of pandemics on global supply chains based on different waves and threat levels.

Impact of pandemics on global supply chains. Adapted from Eaton and Connor (2020) .

4.2.3. Impact of COVID-19 on the aviation sector

The transportation sector is the hardest hit sector by COVID-19 due to the large-scale restrictions in mobility and aviation activities ( IEA, 2020 ; Le Quéré et al., 2020 ; Muhammad et al., 2020 ). In the aviation sector, for example, where revenue generation is a function of traffic levels, the sector has experienced flight cancellations and bans, leading to fewer flights and a corresponding immense loss in aeronautical revenues. This is even compounded by the fact that in comparison to other stakeholders in the aviation industry, when traffic demand declines, airports have limited avenues to reducing costs because the cost of maintaining and operating an airport remains the same and airports cannot relocate terminals and runaways or shutdown ( Hockley, 2020 ). Specifically, in terms of passenger footfalls in airports and planes, the Air Transport Bureau (2020) modelled the impact of COVID-19 on scheduled international passenger traffic for the full year 2020 under two scenarios namely Scenario 1 (the first sign of recovery in late May) and Scenario 2 (restart in the third quarter or later). Under Scenario 1, it estimated an overall reduction of: between 39%-56% of airplane seats; 872-1,303 million passengers, corresponding to a loss of gross operating revenues between ~$153 - $ 231 billion. Under Scenario 2, it predicted an overall drop of: between 49%-72% of airplane seats; 1,124 to 1,540 million passengers, with an equivalent loss of gross operating revenues between ~$198 - $ 273 billion. They concluded that the predicted impacts are a function of the duration and size of the pandemic and containment measures, the confidence level of customers for air travel, economic situations, and the pace of economic recovery ( Air Transport Bureau, 2020 ).

The losses incurred by the aviation industry require context and several other comparison-based predictions within the airline industry have also been reported. For instance, the International Civil Aviation Organization ICAO (2020) predicted an overall decline ininternational passengers ranging from 44% to 80% in 2020 compared to 2019. Airports Council International, ACI (2020) also forecasted a loss of two-fifths of passenger traffic and >$76 billion in airport revenues in 2020 in comparison to business as usual. Similarly, the International Air Transport Association IATA (2020) forecasted $113 billion in lost revenue and 48% drop in revenue passenger kilometres (RPKs) for both domestic and international routes ( Hockley, 2020 ). For pandemic scenario comparisons, Fig. 6 shows the impact of past disease outbreaks on aviation. As shown, the impact of COVID‐19 has already outstripped the 2003 SARS outbreak which had resulted in the reduction of annual RPKs by 8% and $6 billion revenues for Asia/Pacific airlines, for example. The 6‐month recovery path of SARS is, therefore, unlikely to be sufficient for the ongoing COVID-19 crisis ( Air Transport Bureau, 2020 ) but gives a backdrop and context for how airlines and their domestic/international markets may be impacted.

Impact of past disease outbreaks on aviation ( Air Transport Bureau, 2020 ).

Notably, these predictions are bad news for the commercial aspects of air travel (and jobs) but from the carbon/greenhouse gas emission and CE perspective, these reductions are enlightening and should force the airline industry to reflect on more environmentally sustainable models. However, the onus is also on the aviation industry to emphasise R&D on solutions that are CE-friendly (e.g. fuel efficiency; better use of catering wastes; end of service recycling of aircraft in sectors such as mass housing, or re-integrating airplane parts into new supply chains) and not merely investigating ways to recoup lost revenue due to COVID-19.

4.2.4. Impact of COVID-19 on the tourism industry

Expectedly, the impact of COVID-19 on aviation has led to a knock-on effect on the tourismindustry, which is nowadays hugely dependent on air travel. For instance, the United Nation World Tourism Organization UNWTO (2020) reported a 22% fall in international tourism receipts of $80 billion in 2020, corresponding to a loss of 67 million international arrivals. Depending on how long the travel restictions and border closures last, current scenario modelling indicated falls between 58% to 78% in the arrival of international tourists, but the outlook remains hugely uncertain. The continuous existence of the travel restrictions could put between 100 to 120 million direct tourism-related jobs at risk. At the moment, COVID-19 has rendered the sector worst in the historical patterns of international tourism since 1950 with a tendency to halt a 10-year period of sustained growth since the last global economic recession ( UNWTO, 2020 ). It has also been projected that a drop of ~60% in international tourists will be experienced this year, reducing tourism's contribution to global GDP, while affecting countries whose economy relies on this sector ( Naidoo and Fisher, 2020 ). Fig. 7 depicts the impact of COVID-19 on tourism in Q1 of 2020 based on % change in international tourists’ arrivals between January and March.

The impact of COVID-19 on tourism in quarter 1of 2020. Provisional data but current as of 31st August 2020 ( UNWTO, 2020 ).

4.2.5. Impact of COVID-19 on sustainable development goals

In 2015, the United Nations adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with the view to improve livelihood and the natural world by 2030, making all countries of the world to sign up to it. To succeed, the foundations of the SDGs were premised on two massive assumptions namely globalisation and sustained economic growth. However, COVID-19 has significantly hampered this assumption due to several factors already discussed. Indeed, COVID-19 has brought to the fore the fact that the SDGs as currently designed are not resilient to shocks imposed by pandemics. Prior to COVID-19, progress across the SDGs was slow. Naidoo and Fisher (2020) reported that two-thirds of the 169 targets will not be accomplished by 2030 and some may become counterproductive because they are either under threat due to this pandemic or not in a position to mitigate associated impacts.

4.3. Positive impact of COVID-19

In this section, we discussed some of the positive ramifications of COVID-19. Despite the many detrimental effects, COVID-19 has provoked some natural changes in behaviour and attitudes with positive influences on the planet. Nonetheless, to the extent that the trends discussed below were imposed by the pandemic, they also underscore a growing momentum for transforming business operations and production towards the ideal of the CE.

4.3.1. Improvements in air quality

Due to the COVID-19-induced lockdown, industrial activities have dropped, causing significant reductions in air pollution from exhaust fumes from cars, power plants and other sources of fuel combustion emissions in most cities across the globe, allowing for improved air quality ( Le Quéré et al., 2020 ; Muhammad et al., 2020 ). This is evident from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration ( NASA, 2020a ) and European Space Agency ( ESA, 2020 ) Earth Observatory pollution satellites showing huge reductions in air pollution over China and key cities in Europe as depicted in Fig. 8 . In China, for example, air pollution reduction of between 20-30% was achieved and a 20-year low concentration of airborne particles in India is observed; Rome, Milan, and Madrid experienced a fall of ~45%, with Paris recording a massive reduction of 54% ( NASA, 2020b ). In the same vein, the National Centre for Atmospheric Science, York University, reported that air pollutants induced by NO 2 fell significantly across large cities in the UK. Although Wang et al. (2020) reported that in certain parts of China, severe air pollution events are not avoided through the reduction in anthropogenic activities partially due to the unfavourable meteorological conditions. Nevertheless, these data are consistent with established accounts linking industrialization and urbanization with the negative alteration of the environment ( Rees, 2002 ).

The upper part shows the average nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 ) concentrations from January 1-20, 2020 to February 10-25, 2020, in China. While the lower half shows NO 2 concentrations over Europe from March 13 to April 13, 2020, compared to the March-April averaged concentrations from 2019 ( ESA, 2020 ; NASA, 2020a ).

The scenarios highlighted above reiterates the fact that our current lifestyles and heavy reliance on fossil fuel-based transportation systems have significant consequences on the environment and by extension our wellbeing. It is this pollution that was, over time, responsible for a scourge of respiratory diseases, coronary heart diseases, lung cancer, asthma etc.( Mabahwi et al., 2014 ), rendering plenty people to be more susceptible to the devastating effects of the coronavirus ( Auffhammer et al., 2020 ). Air pollution constitutes a huge environmental threat to health and wellbeing. In the UK for example, between ~28,000 to ~36,000 deaths/year was linked to long-term exposure to air pollutants ( PHE, 2020 ). However, the reduction in air pollution with the corresponding improvements in air quality over the lockdown period has been reported to have saved more lives than already caused by COVID-19 in China ( Auffhammer et al., 2020 ).

4.3.2. Reduction in environmental noise

Alongside this reduction in air pollutants is a massive reduction in environmental noise. Environmental noise, and in particular road traffic noise, has been identified by the European Environment Agency, EEA (2020) to constitute a huge environmental problem affecting the health and well-being of several millions of people across Europe including distortion in sleep pattern, annoyance, and negative impacts on the metabolic and cardiovascular system as well as cognitive impairment in children. About 20% of Europe's population experiences exposure to long-term noise levels that are detrimental to their health. The EEA (2020) submitted that 48000new cases of ischaemic heart disease/year and ~12000 premature deaths are attributed to environmental noise pollution. Additionally, they reported that ~22 million people suffer chronic high annoyance alongside ~6.5 million people who experienceextreme high sleep disturbance. In terms of noise from aircraft, ~12500 schoolchildren were estimated to suffer from reading impairment in school. The impact of noise has long been underestimated, and although more premature deaths are associated with air pollution in comparison to noise, however noise constitutes a bigger impact on indicators of the quality of life and mental health ( EEA, 2020 ).

A recent study on the aftereffect of COVID-19 pandemic on exercise rates across the globe concluded that reduced traffic congestions and by extension reduced noise and pollution has increased the rate at which people exercise as they leveraged the ensued pleasant atmosphere. Average, moderate, and passive (i.e. people who exercised once a week before COVID-19) athletes have seen the frequency of their exercise regime increased by 88%, 38%, and 156% respectively ( Snider-Mcgrath, 2020 ).

4.3.3. Increased cleanliness of beaches

Beaches constitute the interface between land and ocean, offering coastal protection from marine storms and cyclones ( Temmerman et al., 2013 ), and are an integral part of natural capital assets found in coastal areas ( Zambrano-Monserrate et al., 2018 ). They provide services (e.g. tourism, recreation) that are crucial for the survival of coastal communities and possess essential values that must be prevented against overexploitation ( Lucrezi et al., 2016 ; Vousdoukas et al., 2020 ). Questionable use to which most beaches have been subjected have rendered them pollution ridden ( Partelow et al., 2015 ). However, due to COVID-19-induced measures, notable changes in terms of the physical appearance of numerous beaches across the globe have been observed ( Zambrano-Monserrate et al., 2020 ).

4.3.4. Decline in primary energy use

Global energy demand during the first quarter of 2020 fell by ~3.8% compared to the first quarter of 2019, with a significant effect noticeable in March as control efforts heightened in North America and Europe ( IEA, 2020 ). The International Energy Agency (IEA) submitted that if curtailment measures in the form of restricted movement continue for long and economic recoveries are slow across different parts of the globe, as is progressively likely, annual energy demand will plummet by up to 6%, erasing the last five years energy demand growth. As illustrated in Fig. 9 , if IEA's projections become the reality, the world could experience a plunge in global energy use to a level not recorded in the last 70 years. The impact will surpass the effect of the 2008 financial crisis by a factor of more than seven times. On the other hand, if COVID-19 is contained earlier than anticipated and there is an early re-start of the economy at a successful rate, the fall in energy could be constrained to <4% ( IEA, 2020 ). However, a rough re-start of the economy characterised by supply chain disruptions and a second wave of infections in the second half of the year could further impede growth ( IEA, 2020 ).

Annual rate of change in primary energy demand, since 1900, with key events impacting energy demand highlighted ( IEA, 2020 ).

Coal was reported to have been hit the hardest by ~8% in comparison to the first quarter of 2019 due to the impact of COVID-19 in China whose economy is driven by coal, reduced gas costs, continued growth in renewables, and mild weather conditions. Oil demand was also strongly affected, plummeting by ~5% in the first quarter driven mainly by restrictions in mobility and aviation activities which constitute ~60% of global oil demand ( IEA, 2020 ). For instance, global road transport and aviation activities were respectively ~50% and 60% below the 2019 average. Global electricity demand declined by >20% during full lockdown restrictions, with a corresponding spill over effect on the energy mix. Accordingly, the share of renewable energy sources across the energy supply increased due to priority dispatch boosted by larger installed capacity and the fact that their outputs are largely unconstrained by demand ( IEA, 2020 ). However, there was a decline for all other sources of electricity including gas, coal and nuclear power ( IEA, 2020 ).

4.3.5. Record low CO 2 emissions

Unprecedented reduction in global CO 2 emissions is another positive effect that can be attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic.The massive fall in energy demand induced by COVID-19 accounted for the dramatic decline in global GHG emissions. The annual CO 2 emissions have not only been projected to fall at a rate never seen before, but the fall is also envisioned to be the biggest in a single year outstripping the fall experienced from the largest recessions of the past five decades combined ( IEA, 2020 ).The global CO 2 emissions are projected to decline by ~8% (2.6 GCO 2 ) to the levels of the last decade. If achieved, this 8% emissions reduction will result in the most substantial reduction ever recorded as it is expected to be six times larger than the milestone recorded during the 2009 financial crisis, ( Fig. 10 ). Characteristically, after an economic meltdown, the surge in emissions may eclipse the decline, unless intervention options to set the economy into recovery mode is based on cleaner and more resilient energy infrastructure ( IEA, 2020 ).

Global energy-related emissions (top) and annual change (bottom) in GtCO 2 , with projected 2020 levels highlighted in red. Other major events are indicated to provide a sense of scale ( IEA, 2020 ).

4.3.6. Boost in digitalisation

The COVID-19 pandemic has been described as an opportunity to further entrench digital transformation without the ‘digitalism’ which is an extreme and adverse form of connectedness ( Bayram et al., 2020 ). Protecting patients from unnecessary exposure was a driver for telemedicine ( Moazzami et al., 2020 ) and virtual care would become the new reality ( Wosik et al., 2020 ). The necessity for social distancing under lockdown circumstances has also highlighted the importance (and need) for remote working ( Dingel and Neiman, 2020 ; Omary et al., 2020 ), which has had implications for broadband connectivity ( Allan et al., 2020 ) as well as reductions in transportation-related pollution levels ( Spash, 2020 ). The impact of COVID-19 on remote working and digitalisation of work is expected to constitute long-term implications for reduced fossil fuel consumption due to mobility and commuting ( Kanda and Kivimaa, 2020 ). Besides, the survival and thriving of many small business restaurants during the lockdown period depended on whether they had a digital resilience, via online platforms, through which they could exploit the home delivery market via Uber Eats ( Raj et al., 2020 ). For consumers, the pandemic has seen a noticeable increase in online orders for food in many countries such as: Taiwan ( Chang and Meyerhoefer, 2020 ); Malaysia ( Hasanat et al., 2020 ); Germany ( Dannenberg et al., 2020 ) as well as Canada ( Hobbs, 2020 ).

4.4. Unsustainability of current economic and business models amidst COVID-19

It is interesting to observe that while COVID-19 has led to a very steep reduction in air pollution in advanced economies due to reduced economic activity imposed by the lockdown, this pandemic-driven positive impact is only temporary as they do not reflect changes in economic structures of the global economy ( Le Quéré et al., 2020 ). The changes are not due to the right decisions from governments in terms of climate breakdown policies and therefore should not be misconstrued as a climate triumph. More importantly, life in lockdown will not linger on forever as economies will need to rebuild and we can expect a surge in emissions again. To drive home the point, we conducted a decomposition analysis of key drivers (accelerators or retardants) of four global air pollutants using Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) framework ( Ang, 2005 ; Fujii et al., 2013 ), with the results shown in Fig. 11 . The drivers of the pollutants considered based on the production side of an economy include: (i) economic activity effect, given thatemissions can increase or decrease as a result of changes in the activity level of the entire economy; (ii) industrialeconomy structure effect, based on the fact thatthe growth in emissions is a function of the changes in the industrial activity composition; (iii) emissions intensity effect, which can be improvements or deteriorations at the sectoral level, depending on theenergy efficiency (e.g. cleaner production processes) of the sector; (iv) fuel mix or fuel dependency effect, given that its composition influences the amount of emissions; and (v) emission factors effect, because these factors, for different fuel types, changes over time due toswitching from fossil fuels to renewables, for example.

Drivers of representative four (4) global pollutants: a) CO 2 emissions; b) NO x emissions; c) SO x emissions; d) CO emissions. All data for the decomposition analysis of the four pollutants were obtained from the WIOD database ( Timmer et al., 2012 ).

As shown in Fig. 11 a, for example, between 1995 and 2009, global change in CO 2 emission was 32%, where economic activity (+48%) and emission factor (+2%) acted as accelerators, while economic structure (-8%), emission intensity (-9%) and fuel mix (-1%) acted as retardants, of the global CO 2 emission dynamics and trajectory.This implies that although economic activities, as expected, alongside emission factor drove up emissions, however, the upward effect of both drivers was offset by the combined improvements of other driving factors namely economic structure, emission intensity, and fuel mix. Indeed, cutting back on flying or driving less as we have experienced due to COVID-19 contributed to ~8% in emission reduction, however, zero-emissions cannot be attained based on these acts alone. Simply put, emissions reduction cannot be sustained until an optimal balance across the aforementioned drivers informed by structural changes in the economy is attained. As Gates (2020a) rightly stated – the world should be using more energy, not less, provided it is clean.

Characteristically, after an economic meltdown, like the global recession in 2008, there is a surge in emissions ( Feng et al., 2015 ; Koh et al., 2016 ). The current social trauma of lockdown and associated behavioural changes tends to modify the future trajectory unpredictably. However, social responses would not drive the profound and sustained reduction required to attain a low-carbon economy ( Le Quéré et al., 2020 ). This is evident given that we live on a planet interlinked by networked product supply chains, multidimensional production technologies, and non-linear consumption patterns ( Acquaye et al., 2017 ; Ibn-Mohammed et al., 2018 ; Koh et al., 2016 ). Additionally, post COVID-19, the society may suffer from green bounce back– there appears to be an increasing awareness of climate change and air pollution because of this pandemic (though the linkages are non-causal). On the one hand this might promote greener choices on behalf of consumers, but on the other it may result in increased car ownership (at the expense of mass transit), driving up emissions. As such, establishing approaches that ensure an optimal balance between quality of life and the environmental burden the planet can bear is pertinent, if the boundaries of environmental sustainability informed by the principles of low-carbon CE are to be extended. In the next section, the role of the CE as a potential strategy for combating pandemics such as COVID-19 is discussed.

5. The role of circular economy

For long, the central idea of the industrial economy rests on the traditional linear economic system of taking resources, making products from them, and disposing of the product at the end of life. Experts referred to this as “extract-produce-use-dump”, “take-make-waste”, or “take-make-dispose” energy flow model of industrial practice ( Geissdoerfer et al., 2017 ; Kirchherr et al., 2017 ; MacArthur, 2013 ). However, the unlimited use of natural resources with no concern for sustainability jeopardizes the elastic limit of the planet's resource supply. For instance, Girling (2011) submitted that ~90% of the raw materials used in manufacturing become waste before the final product leaves the production plant while ~80% of products manufactured are disposed of within the first 6 months of their life. Similarly, Hoornweg and Bhada-Tata (2012) reported that ~1.3 billion tonnes of solid waste with a corresponding cost implication of $205.4 billion/year is generated by cities across the globe and that such waste might grow to ~2.2 billion tonnes by 2025, with a corresponding rate of $375.5 billion. This is further compounded by the fact that at the global level, the demand for resources is forecasted to double by 2050 ( Ekins et al., 2016 ).

Against this backdrop, the search for an industrial economic model that satisfies the multiple roles of decoupling of economic growth from resource consumption, waste management and wealth creation, has heightened interests in concepts about circular economy ( Ekins et al., 2016 ; MacArthur, 2013 ).In theory, CE framework hinges on three principles: designing out waste, keeping products and materials in use and regenerating the natural systems ( MacArthur, 2013 ). Practically, CE is aimed at: (i) emphasizing environmentally-conscious manufacturing and product recovery ( Gungor and Gupta, 1999 ); (ii) promoting the avoidance of unintended ecological degradation in symbiotic cooperation between corporations, consumers and government ( Bauwens et al., 2020 ); and (iii) shifting the focus to a holistic product value chain and cradle-to-cradle life cycle via promotion of product repair/re-use and waste management ( Duflou et al., 2012 ; Lieder and Rashid, 2016 ; Rashid et al., 2013 ).

Given the current COVID-19 pandemic, there has never been a more adequate time to consider how the principles of CE could be translated into reality when the global economy begins to recover. This is pertinent because the pandemic has further exposed the limitations of the current dominant linear economy regarding how it is failing the planet and its inhabitants, and has revealed the global ecosystem's exposure to many risks including climate breakdown, supply chain vulnerabilities and fragility, social inequality and inherent brittleness ( Bachman, 2020 ; Sarkis et al., 2020 ). The pandemic continues to amplify the global interlinkages of humankind and the interdependencies that link our natural environment, economic, and social systems ( Haigh and Bäunker, 2020 ). In the subsections that follow, the potentials of CE as a tool for: (i) climate change mitigation; (ii) crafting a more resilient economy, and ; (iii) facilitating a socially just and inclusive society, is briefly discussed.

5.1. Circular economy as a tool for climate breakdown mitigation

As highlighted in Section 4.3.5 , a CO 2 emission reduction of 8%, which in real terms implies an equivalent of ~172 billion tCO 2 will be released instead of ~187 billion tCO 2 , is indeed unprecedented. Nevertheless, the peculiar conclusion from the lockdown is that it still entails emissions of 92% of the initial value while there was restrictions to mobility and other related leisure activities. Measures for mitigating climate change have often been presented dramatically as a "prohibition of the nice things of life", but as shown, a cut-off of such an amount of nice things only delivers an 8% reduction. More importantly, it comes at a heavy cost of between $3,200/tCO 2 and $5,400/tCO 2 in the US, for example, based on data from the Rhodium Group ( Gates, 2020a ). In other words, the shutdown is reducing emissions at a cost between 32 and 54 times the $100/tCO 2 deemed a reasonable carbon price by economists ( Gates, 2020a ). This suggests that a completely different approach to tackling climate issue is required.

Accordingly, there is the need for a system that calls for greater adoption of a more resilient low-carbon CE model, given the predictions by experts that climate breakdown and not COVID-19 will constitute the biggest threat to global health ( Hussey and Arku, 2020 ; Watts et al., 2018a ; Watts et al., 2018b ). International bodies and country-level environmental policies have highlighted the fact that a significant reduction in GHG emissions cannot be achieved by transitioning to renewables alone but with augmentation with CE strategies. The demands side CE strategies such as (i)material recirculation (more high-value recycling, less primary material production, lower emissions per tonne of material); (ii)product material efficiency (improved production process, reuse of components and designing products with fewer materials); (iii)circular business models (higher utilisation and longer lifetime of products through design for durability and disassembly, utilisation of long-lasting materials, improved maintenance and remanufacturing), could reduce emissions whilst contributing to climate change mitigation ( Enkvist et al., 2018 ). CE principles, when adopted in a holistic manner provide credible solutions to the majority of the structural weaknesses exposed by COVID-19, offering considerable opportunities in competitiveness and long-term reduced GHG emissions across value chains. Investments in climate-resilient infrastructure and the move towards circular and low-carbon economy future can play the dual role of job creation while enhancing environmental and economic benefits.

5.2. Circular economy as a vehicle for crafting more resilient economies

Haigh and Bäunker (2020) reported that if we muddle through every new crisis based on the current economic model, using short-term solutions to mitigate the impact, future shocks will continue to surpass capacities. It is, therefore, necessary to devise long-term risk-mitigation and sustainable fiscal thinking with the view to shift away from the current focus on profits and disproportionate economic growth. Resilience in the context of the CE largely pertains to having optimized cycles (i.e. products are designed for longevity and optimized for a cycle of disassembly and reuse that renders them easier to handle and transform). Some cycles can be better by being closed locally (e.g. many food items), and for other cycles, a global value chain could be a better option (e.g. rare earth elements). Due to globalization, all cycles have become organized at the global level, diminishing resilience. COVID-19 has further shown how some particular cycles had the wrong scale level, as such, the adoption of CE can be seen as an invitation to reconsider the optimal capacity of cycles.

Sustainability through resilience thinking would have a positive and lasting impact as reported by the Stockholm Resilience Centre (2016) , which concluded that prosperity and sustainability cannot be accomplished without building “ resilient systems that promote radical innovation in economic policy, corporate strategy, and in social systems and public governance”. It calls for sustainability through resilience thinking to become an overarching policy driver and encourages the application of the principles of such thinking to enhance social innovation. Haigh and Bäunker (2020) concluded that when resilience thinking is employed as a guide, all innovations emanating from circular thinking would extend beyond focusing mainly on boosting the market and competitiveness and recognise the general well-being of the populace as an equal goal. As the global economy recovers from COVID-19, it has become more apparent that there is a strong sense of interconnectedness between environmental, economic and social sustainability ( Bauwens et al., 2020 ).

5.3. Circular economy as a facilitator of a socially just and inclusive society

Advanced economies have mainly focused on maintaining the purchasing power of households through the establishment of the furlough scheme (in the UK, for example). Most developing countries have also adopted a similar approach through the integration of containment measures with a huge increase in social protection spending. However, these intervention strategies in response to the pandemic have further revealed the social injustice and inequality between countries and communities given that the deployment of such strategy in advanced economies could devastate developing countries and communities ( Ahmed et al., 2020 ; Haigh and Bäunker, 2020 ). Guan and Hallegatte (2020) revealed that developing and underdeveloped economies face tougher and more challenging situation in comparison to their developed counterparts, because even under the assumption that social protection systems could fully replace income and shield businesses from bankruptcy, maintaining access to essential commodities is impossible if the country is lacking in production capabilities in the first place. Furthermore, in the underdeveloped world, the idea of working from home is very difficult due to the lack of infrastructure and access to health facilities is severely cumbersome. As such, short-term fixes adopted by governments cannot adequately address deep-rooted inequality and social injustice.

Accordingly, Preston et al. (2019) submitted that CE has the potential to minimise prevailing pressures and struggles regarding conflicts due to imbalanced distribution of resources, through participatory forms of governance that entails the inclusion of local stakeholders in resource management initiatives. This can be achieved through the adoption of CE strategy such as closed-loop value chains, where wastes are transformed into resources with the view to not only reduce pollution but to simultaneously aid the pursuance of social inclusion objectives. A number of companies are already embracing this idea. For instance, under the Food Forward SA initiative, “ the world of excess is connected with the world of need ” through the recovery of edible surplus food from the consumer goods supply chain and gets redistributed to the local community. This ensures loops are closed and the needy receive nourishment ( Haigh and Bäunker, 2020 ). With sufficient investment in the CE, developing countries can leapfrog their developed counterparts in digital and materials innovation to integrate sustainable production and consumption and low-carbon developments at the core of their economies. Additionally, Stahel (2016) reported that another benefit of the CE as a facilitator of a socially just and inclusive society is that it is likely to be more labour-intensive due to the variety of end-of-life products and the high cost of automating their processing compared to manual work. As such, CE can enable the creation of local jobs and “reindustrialisation of regions” ( Stahel, 2019 ) through the substitution of: manpower for energy, materials for (local) labour, and local workshops for centralised factories ( Stahel, 2019 ), while boosting the repair economy and local micro industries. Of course, not everybody will see this as a benefit, and many would like to see more automation, not less. However, this is a political/economic argument, not an engineering or scientific one. In the next section, barriers to CE in general and in the context of COVID-19 is discussed.

5.4. Barriers to CE in the context of COVID-19

On the surface, the benefits of CE should be obvious as it strives for three wins in the three dimensions of social, economic and environment impacts through a symbiotic vision of reduced material usage, reduced waste generation, extending value retention in products and designing products for durability. However, limiting barriers obviating the success of CE have existed around technical implementation, behavioural change, financial and intellectual investments, policy and regulations, market dynamics, socio-cultural considerations as well as operational cost of transforming from the linear economy to one based on circularity ( Friant et al., 2020 ). In more concrete terms, the barriers dwell within the ecosystem of actors (and the interactions within the actors) involved in the move towards CE ( Lieder and Rashid, 2016 ).

Pre-COVID-19, Korhonen et al. (2018) enumerated six fundamental factors hindering the promise of CE: (i) thermodynamic factors (i.e. limit imposed by material and energy combustion in recycling/re-manufacturing); (ii) complexity of spatial and temporal boundaries (i.e. material and energy footprints for a product cannot be easily reduced to a point in space and time for an in-depth analysis of environmental impacts); (iii) interlink of governance and nation's economy; (iv) consumer and organizational inertia (i.e. reluctance to embrace new way of doing things due to uncertainty about the success of business models as well as fuzziness around organizational culture and management models that rely on CE); (v) fragile industrial ecosystems (featuring the difficulty of establishing and managing intra-/inter-organizational collaboration along with local/regional authorities); and (vi) lack of consensus on what the many Rs (re-use, recycle, recover, repurpose, repair, refurbish, remanufacture) embedded in CE framework really means ( Kirchherr et al., 2017 ). Challenges in data sharing between product end points and stakeholders, complexity in the supply chain with unclear details of product biography over time, and prohibitive start-up investment costs have also been identified as CE barrier in other climes ( Jaeger and Upadhyay, 2020 ; Manninen et al., 2018 ). Other issues along similar lines were captured in the work by several other authors including Galvão et al. (2020) , Kirchherr et al. (2018) , Govindan and Hasanagic (2018) , De Jesus and Mendonça (2018) and many more.

The paradox of COVID-19 is grounded on creating a once in a lifetime opportunity to re-examine the difficulty of some of these barriers, but it also unveiled a new set of challenges. For instance, the sharing economy models that have been hitherto hailed as exemplars of CE strategy is now perceived differently by many urban dwellers because of the behavioural change embedded in “social distancing”, which is necessary to limit the spread of the virus. Although if concepts such as “access over ownership” or “pay for performance” service have become fully operational, they could have constituted a significant solution to offer flexibility. Additionally, it has been argued that COVID-19 will ‘disrupt some disruptors’ peer-to-peer (P2P) providers such as Airbnb, which has reported a 4.16% drop in local bookings for every doubling new COVID-19 cases ( Hu and Lee, 2020 ). In transportation, demand from ride-sharing modes could increase due to commuters wanting to minimise exposure to COVID-19 in mass transport systems like buses and trains ( Chandra, 2020 ). However, the risks of human-to-human transmission of COVID-19 for passengers not wearing facemask have been noted ( Liu and Zhang, 2020 ), including when either passengers or drivers in ride-hailing and car-sharing disruptors like Uber do not wear facemasks ( Wong et al., 2020 ).

Reducing emissions, in the long run, requires large investments, from both the public and private sectors, in low-carbon technologies and infrastructure in terms of both innovation and diffusion ( OECD, 2018 ). Given the downturn of the global economy due to COVID-19, the prospects of significant low-carbon investments from the private sector have significantly reduced compared to pre-COVID-19. This view is not just limited to the private sector, but also to the public sector, as echoed by Naidoo and Fisher (2020) . Hence, post COVID-19, accelerating progress towards CE still requires: (i) a decisive legal and financial championships from local, regional and national authorities; (ii) innovation across multiple domains (product design, production technologies, business models, financing and consumer behaviours); (iii) governments to promote green logistics and waste management regulations with reasonable incentives to aid producers and manufacturers in minimizing loss while maximizing value. It is therefore recommended that governments provide the much-needed policy framework that will eliminate some of aforementioned barriers to facilitate the urgent transition to CE. Doing this will build resilience for community response to future pandemic and it also aligns with some of the existing roadmaps for resource efficiency ( European Commission, 2011 ).

6. Opportunities for circular economy post COVID-19

COVID-19 has instigated a focus on vibrant local manufacturing as an enabler of resilient economy and job creation; fostered behavioural change in consumers; triggered the need for diversification and circularity of supply chains, and evinced the power of public policy for tackling urgent socio-economic crises. As we rise to the challenges imposed by COVID-19, the question is no longer should we build back better, but how. Consequently, going forward, crafting a roadmap for a sustainable future is as much about the governmental will to forge a new path to socio-economic growth as it is about local businesses joining forces with the consumers to enable the transition to CE. As already documented in the earlier sections of this paper, governments around the world have deployed many financial policy instruments to combat the short-term consequences of COVID-19 pandemic. Still, in the long-term, the adoption of circular economy principles across various technological frontiers holds the promise to bring about a desired technical and behavioural change that will benefit many nations around the world.

Specifically, adopting the CE principle will alleviate some of the detrimental effects of COVID-19 pandemic in the future. To mention just a few: (i) a national level adoption of CE will reduce the over-reliance on one country as the manufacturing hub of the world; (ii) a systematic shift away from the traditional polluting, energy-intensive, manufacturing-driven economy to a CE, based on renewable energy, smart materials, smart re-manufacturing, and digital technology will strengthen the fight against pollution; and (iii) the transition to CE will also spur local job creation along several of the axes of societal needs (e.g. built environment, mobility, health, consumables, etc.). Accordingly, in the subsections that follow, an overview of recommendations as well as policy measures, incentives, and regulatory support for advancing sector-specific CE strategies in a post-COVID-19 world is presented.

6.1. Local manufacturing and re-manufacturing of essential medical accessories

Disruptions due to COVID-19 has been attributed to unprecedented demand, panic buying, and intentional hoarding of essential medical goods for profit ( Bradsher and Alderman, 2020 ; Fischer et al., 2020 ). The shortage of many items was so dire in many countries that the principle of CE, such as re-use, is already been unwittingly recommended ( Gondi et al., 2020 ), by respectable bodies such as the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) ( Ranney et al., 2020 ). However, designed and produced from non-CE compliant processes, medical accessories such as PPE cannot be easily refurbished for re-use without leading to severe degradation in their efficiencies, as noticed for example, in the case of particulate respirators ( Liao et al., 2020 ). Accordingly, it is recommended that companies strive to establish competencies in eco-design and environmentally beneficial innovation to facilitate product re-use in the long run. Some of the desired competencies centre on design strategies for closing resource loops (e.g. designing for technological and biological cycles) as pioneered by McDonough and Braungart (2010) .

A detailed discussion of these competencies is also enunciated by Braungart et al. (2007) , where the authors differentiated between eco-efficiency (less desirable) and eco-effectiveness (the desired dream of CE), for companies to be compliant with the CE framework. Meanwhile, a starting point for companies to shift to eco-effectiveness at the product design level, which will facilitate product re-use, is to follow the five-step framework enumerated by Braungart et al. (2007) or to adopt the analytical framework to explore some of the key dimensions in eco-design innovations developed by Carrillo-Hermosilla et al. (2010) . During implementation, the preceding steps comport with the idea of eco-factories that take pride in design for effortless end-of-life product re-use and design for “upcycling” and remanufacturing ( Bocken et al., 2016 ; Herrmann et al., 2014 ; Ijomah, 2010 ), all of which falls under the umbrella of CE.

Another emerging evidence in favour of CE, also adopted inadvertently during this pandemic, is the ease with which several manufacturers have pivoted their factory floors to make different products in response to the shortage of medical accessories. Few examples of these companies in the UK include, but not limited to: AE Aerospace, which retooled its factory floor to produce milled parts for ventilators; Alloy Wire International re-purposed its machinery to make springs for ventilators; AMTICO (flooring manufacture) re-configured its production lines to make visors for front line workers; BAE Systems deployed its factory resources to produce and distribute over 40000 face shields; and BARBOUR (a clothing company) re-purposed to produce PPE for nurses ( Williamson, 2020 ).

6.2. CE strategies for managing hospital medical and general waste

Wastes generated by the healthcare industry (HCI) normally arouse concerns about operational, public, and environmental safety as a result of the awareness of the corrosive, hazardous, infectious, reactive, possibly radioactive, and toxic nature of the wastes’ composition ( Lee et al., 1991 ; Prüss-Üstün et al., 1999 ). Consequently, the management of the different categories of healthcare waste far removed from the traditional municipal wastes, falls under stringent national or local regulatory frameworks. Pre-COVID-19, the staggering scale of HCI waste is reported to reach into millions of tonnes per year and there have been many studies of national-level attempts at managing these wastes ( Da Silva et al., 2005 ; Insa et al., 2010 ; Lee et al., 1991 ; Oweis et al., 2005 ; Tudor et al., 2005 ). However, this problem is expected to worsen with the tremendous surge, in the last few months, in the volume of disposable medical hardware (PPE, masks, gloves, disposable gears worn by healthcare workers and sanitation workers as well as those contaminated by contacts with COVID-19 patients). Another allied problem is the troubling shift among consumers who now prioritize concerns for hygiene by leaning towards plastic packaging (e.g. in food delivery and grocery shopping) during this pandemic at the expense of environmental impacts ( Prata et al., 2020 ). Most of these products are derived from non-biodegradable plastics, and their disposal has not been given much thought. As a result, the management of these wastes has raised understandable angst in several quarters ( Klemeš et al., 2020 ; Xiao and Torok, 2020 ). Frustratingly, there is much less that can be done at the moment apart from devising judicious waste management policy for these potentially hazardous wastes.

The traditional steps concerning the treatment of HCI wastes (such as collection and separation, storage, transportation to landfill, and decontamination/disposal) suffer from many complications that make the management a challenging undertaking ( Windfeld and Brooks, 2015 ). To alleviate the complexity, the characterization of the physicochemical composition of HCI waste has become an important tool in devising crucial steps for setting up waste minimization and recycling programs ( Kaiser et al., 2001 ). This aligns with the objective of circular economy (CE), which prioritizes the prevention of waste, failing which it proposes the re-use/recyclability of materials from waste to close the loop.

Wong et al. (1994) reported that hospital wastes involve different types of materials: plastics (tubes, gloves, syringes, blood bags), metals (basins, aluminium cans), papers (towel papers, toilet papers, newspapers), cotton/textiles (drapes, table covers, diapers, pads, bandages), glass (bottles) etc. With this categorization in mind, a CE product design consideration that looks promising in the near future, as a way to avert some of the dangers that can be triggered by events such as COVID-19, is to increase the volume of recyclable materials and biodegradable bioplastics in the production of medical accessories. However, the reality is that not all medical gears and products can be derived from bio-plastics or recyclable materials, and some will inevitably continue to be fabricated with materials that need further downstream processing. Yet, the application of CE to the healthcare industry (HCI) remains a touchy subject. Understandably, health and safety concerns, as well as requirements to meet stringent regulations, tend to override the environmental gain from the 4R practice promoted by CE ( Kane et al., 2018 ). Nonetheless, the benefits of CE are starting to catch on in the HCI as a means of optimizing hospital supply chains and reduce overhead cost, all the while creating environmental benefits in the course of saving human lives.

Principally, the applications of CE in HCI, like in other fields, are tied to materials flow and an examination of the nature of wastes. Pioneering studies on hospital wastes characterizations ( Diaz et al., 2008 ; Eleyan et al., 2013 ; Özkan, 2013 ; Wong et al., 1994 ), revealed that close to 80% of the wastes can be classified as general wastes, while the remaining 20% falls under the infectious waste category ( WHO, 1998 ). A prevalent method of dealing with the two HCI waste categories has been incineration ( Wong et al., 1994 ). Although suitable for large volumes, incineration produces toxic pollutants such as heavy metals, dioxins, acid gases, and hydrogen chloride ( Yang et al., 2009 ). Consequently, pre-COVID-19, besides incineration, reducing or preventing the volume of wastes in both categories is also shaped by the adoption of green purchasing practices ( Wormer et al., 2013 ). While this may help in the short term, a holistic approach to confronting this problem is the adoption of CE, which can facilitate the shift towards eco-efficient HCI, starting with lifecycle evaluations of medical products to the proposal for re-usable medical instruments ( Cimprich et al., 2019 ; De Soete et al., 2017 ; Penn et al., 2012 ). Numerous CE strategies for healthcare waste management are detailed by Kane et al. (2018) and Voudrias (2018) . Undoubtedly, with COVID-19, there is an uptick in the percentage of waste under the infectious category due to hospitals taking various precautions to facilitate control of the pandemic ( Peng et al., 2020 ). Nevertheless, by subjecting the general waste category to proper sterilization procedure via any of thermal, microwave, bio-chemical sterilization, the huge potential from upcycling of the retrieved materials will edge towards fulfilling the promise of CE within the sector ( Yang et al., 2009 ).

6.3. Embracing resource efficiency in the construction and built environment

As with other economic sectors, COVID-19 has exposed the shortcomings of the built and natural environment's business-as-usual practices, highlighting the prevalence of poor-quality buildings, issues regarding affordability of decent housing and rigidity of the current building stocks ( EMF, 2020b ). Living in poor-quality houses and in small constricted energy inefficient homes, led to the in-house transmission of the virus in some cases ( Clair, 2020 ). This is particularly the case in poorer countries where inadequate access to sanitation amenities has prevented people from adopting best practices necessary for halting the transmission ( Andrew et al., 2020 ). These issues alongside the growing concern and awareness regarding the resource-wasting nature of the sector, present a strong case for rethinking it. The CE is well positioned to offer potential solutions to these problems.

CE can help balance behavioural challenges and opportunities from occupancy requirements. Humans spend up to 90% of their time indoors ( Marques et al., 2018 ; Pitarma et al., 2017 ). The pandemic has led to people spending more time at ‘home’ than at work, leading to massively underutilised office and business spaces, which is likely to increase due to on-going social distancing constraints ( Feber et al., 2020 ) or perhaps due to more organisation discovering the cost benefits of remote working. It is also plausible that upgrading of existing (or design of new) office and commercial spaces would require making them flexible and adaptable to cope with changing needs (e.g. occupant density, social distancing, ventilation, etc.) by using movable walls ( Carra and Magdani, 2017 ). Insufficient ventilation can increase the risk of infection to healthcare workers and susceptible patients in healthcare buildings, especially makeshift hospitals ( Chen and Zhao, 2020 ). The impact of these engineering measures on energy consumption of typical buildings and healthcare facilities needs to be considered because of social distancing measures, which may require a decrease in occupant density but an increase in ventilation rates. So, although energy recovery is high on the agenda for CE in the built environment ( Eberhardt et al., 2019 ), the additional requirement of more mechanical ventilation for less people will stretch the energy consumed by buildings. Some researchers have argued for buildings to avoid recirculation (essential for energy savings) and use 100% fresh outdoor air for mechanical ventilation systems ( Pinheiro and Luís, 2020 ). Such scenarios are likely to increase the adoption of renewable energy sources to support acceptable indoor air quality (IAQ).

The adoption of CE strategies such as material reuse and development of recycling infrastructure can facilitate value circulation and efficient use of resources within the built and natural environment, ensuring a more competitive and cost-effective post-COVID-19 recovery, while contributing to GHG emissions reduction and creating job opportunities ( EMF, 2020b ). For instance, a study by ARUP estimated that designing for steel reuse has the potential of generating savings of 6-27% and 9-43% for a warehouse and an office respectively, whilst constituting up to 25% savings on material costs ( SYSTEMIQ, 2017 ). The EU is leading in policy direction that would make it a legal requirement to introduce recycled content (i.e. material looping) in specific construction products, after the functionality and safety have been vetted ( European Commission, 2020 ). Such initiatives will encourage designers and researchers to incorporate material looping into their overall design strategy across the value chain to ensure they are fit for circulation ( Deloitte, 2020 ). This material looping has been shown to reduce disposal fees and generate new income streams from the secondary materials market ( Rios et al., 2015 ). It is an approach that would help reduce construction waste, which accounts for a third of all solid wastes in countries like India ( EMF, 2016 ). The adoption of digital material passports that supports end-to-end tracking of building materials has been reported by SYSTEMIQ (2017) to aid the identification of materials for reuse as they approach their end of first life, thereby allowing the longevity and encouraging tighter material looping.

COVID-19 in the context of CE will encourage prefabrication, design thinking and renovation. As the building industry moves towards the industrialisation of construction via prefabrication/offsite production, seven strategies have been suggested by Minunno et al. (2018) out of which the principle of designing for eventual disassembly and reuse is critical. With a combined smart and industrialised prefabrication (SAIP) process ( Abbas Elmualim et al., 2018 ), the intelligent performance and circularity of buildings can be boosted by advanced smart technologies ( Windapo and Moghayedi, 2020 ). The building of 1,000 bed Huoshenshan Hospital in Wuhan covering 34,000m 2 in ten days using modular pre-fabricated components, which can be disassembled and reused ( Zhou et al., 2020 ) has demonstrated the capability of the construction industry to deliver adaptable buildings in record time. But it is perhaps in the sphere of refurbishment and renovation that CE in the built environment would mostly be felt. A CE strategy that promotes repair and refurbishment is preferable to one which encourages recycling, since the economic and environmental value of a product is retained better by the former ( Sauerwein et al., 2019 ).

Renovation helps achieve carbon reduction targets while contributing to economic stimulation ( Ibn-Mohammed et al., 2013 ) . Retrofitting, refurbishing or repairing existing buildings leads to lower emission facilities, is less resource-intensive and more cost-effective than demolition or new construction ( Ardente et al., 2011 ; Ibn-Mohammed et al., 2014 ). Nevertheless, circular renovation of buildings must align with circular design thinking – as alluded to above, in terms of re-integrating materials back into the value chain – as well as the need to enhance material/product durability and energy efficiency ( Pomponi and Moncaster, 2017 ). In Europe, renovation of buildings decreases the residential sector's GHG emissions by 63%, with a reduction of up to 73% in the non-residential sector ( Artola et al., 2016 ). In meeting the emerging needs of the renovation sub-sector, digital infrastructure technologies (such as thermographic and infrared surveys, photogrammetry and 3D laser scanning, as well as BIM and Digital Twinning) will play a crucial role in ensuring the low carbon and energy-efficient future of the built environment ( ARUP, 2020 ).

6.4. Bio-cycle economy and the food sector

COVID-19 or not, the food sector is generally wasteful ( Dilkes-Hoffman et al., 2018 ), contributes to environmental degradation ( Beretta and Hellweg, 2019 ), disrupts nutrient flows due to the current linear nature of its value chain, thereby diminishing the nutritional quality of food ( Castañé and Antón, 2017 ). To address these issues, as part of a future resilience in the food sector, a number of CE levers applicable to the sector is highlighted: (i) closing nutrient loops through the adoption of regenerative agriculture ( Rhodes, 2017 ). The organic content of soil reflects its healthiness and propensity to produce nutritious crops. The adoption of regenerative agriculture can facilitate the preservation of soil health through returning organic matter to the soil in the form of food waste or composted by-products or digestates from treatment plants ( Sherwood and Uphoff, 2000 ); (ii) value recovery from organic nutrients through the adoption of anaerobic digestion facilities ( De Gioannis et al., 2017 ; Huang et al., 2017 ), which is related to controlled biogas production for onward injection into natural gas network or conversion to electrical energy ( Atelge et al., 2020 ; Monlau et al., 2015 ). This has the potential to transform ensuing methane from food waste into carbon-neutral energy; and (iii) the embrace of urban and peri-urban agriculture ( Ayambire et al., 2019 ; Lwasa et al., 2014 ; Opitz et al., 2016 ; Thebo et al., 2014 ), which entails the “ cultivation of crops and rearing of animals for food and other uses within and surrounding the boundaries of cities, including fisheries and forestry ”( EPRS, 2014 ). Indeed, by cultivating food in proximity to where it will be consumed, carbon footprint can be mitigated in numerous ways. For instance, through the adoption of urban agriculture, Lee et al. (2015) demonstrated GHG reduction of 11,668 t yr −1 in the transportation sector. The popularity of local farms has severely increased as a direct consequence of COVID-19, whereby people could experience the power of local food cycles and avoid perceived contamination risks in supermarkets. This will further bolster urban and peri-urban agriculture.

All the above-mentioned CE strategies will contribute towards the establishment of a better and more resilient future food system. However, in the context of COVID-19, transitioning to regenerative agricultural production processes and expanding food collection, redistribution and volarisation facilities constitute an integral part of a more resilient and healthy food system that allows greater food security and less wastage, post COVID-19 ( EMF, 2020a ). Investments towards accelerating regenerative agriculture offer economic benefits facilitated by reforms in food, land, and ocean use ( World Economic Forum, 2020 ). It also offer environmental benefits by supporting biologically active ecosystems ( EMF, 2020a ) and through numerous farming mechanisms including no-till farming, adoption of cover crops, crop rotations and diversification ( Ranganatha et al., 2020 ) as well as managed grazing for regenerative livestock rearing ( Fast Company, 2019 ). Similarly, expanding food collection, redistribution and volarisation facilities offers both economic and environmental benefits for the food system ( EMF, 2020a ). However, realising these benefits will require investment in: (i) physical infrastructure like cold chains that support the storage, processing, and supply of edible food, especially in low-income countries, and (ii) processing infrastructure for the collection and volarisation of waste food ( EMF, 2020a ). This will facilitate door-to-door waste food collection, offering avenues for municipal organic waste volarisation.

6.5. Opportunities for CE in the transport and mobility sector

Facilitating the movement of people, products and materials, transportation infrastructures are imperative to the success of circularity in the shift towards sustainable cities given its impact on the quality of life, the local environment and resource consumption ( Van Buren et al., 2016 ). As noted in an earlier section, the transport sector was one of the sectors most heavily impacted by COVID-19. Going forward, many CE strategies could be adopted as part of building a resilient transport sector. Development of compact city for effective mobility given their attributes in terms of being dense with mixed-use neighbourhoods and transit-oriented ( EMF, 2019 ), can create an enabling environment for both shared mobility options (e.g. trams, buses, ride-shares) and active mobility options (e.g. bicycling, walking) ( Chi et al., 2020 ; Shaheen and Cohen, 2020 ). This will help to re-organize urban fabric and promote intelligent use of transportation infrastructures ( Marcucci et al., 2017 ). However, the behavioural change embedded in “social distancing”, which is necessary to limit the contagion, may affect the perception of many urban dwellers about this. On the other hand, less compact cities require increased mobility infrastructure with a corresponding increase in operational vehicle use, leading to more traffic congestion, energy and resource depletion as well as pollution ( UN Habitat, 2013 ).

The use of urban freight strategies for effective reverse logistics and resource flows is also a viable CE strategy for the transport sector ( EMF, 2019 ) as it enables the provision of services in a manner that also supports similar priorities for economic growth, air quality, environmental noise and waste management ( Akgün et al., 2019 ; Kiba-Janiak, 2019 ). Beyond vehicles and infrastructure, the adoption of these strategies can enable the development of new technologies and practices such as virtualisation of products, digital manufacturing, waste collection, and sorting systems. Interestingly, innovative environmentally-friendly logistics solutions resting on the backbone of the CE framework are already materializing and being trialled in various capacities, including: urban consolidation centre (UCC) ( Johansson and Björklund, 2017 ), crowshipping ( Buldeo Rai et al., 2017a ; Rai et al., 2018 ) and off-hour delivery ( Gatta et al., 2019 ). UCC stresses the use of logistics facilities in city suburbs to ease good deliveries to customers ( Browne et al., 2005 ), while crowshipping is a collaborative measure that employs the use of free mobility resources to perform deliveries ( Buldeo Rai et al., 2017b ).

The availability of rich transport data (e.g. impacts of events on transport, commuter habits) and AI-enabled complex data processing technologies can be leveraged to inform the planning, management, and operations of transport networks over time. Real-time data can also be adopted for monitoring and for instant regulations of traffic flow based on route planning, dynamic pricing and parking space allocation. Noticeably, many of these innovative CE-related initiatives still need an efficient governance mechanism ( Janné and Fredriksson, 2019 ). However, coupling them with the deployment of environmentally efficient vehicles and superior technical solutions hinging on the internet-of-things will bring many nations closer to reaping the benefits of CE. Given that urban planning is most often within the remit of governmental agencies, they must therefore develop integrated pathways and strategies for urban mobility to ensure effective logistics and resource flows. Stakeholder engagements within the transport sector can also facilitate innovative solutions that enable better use of assets and big data solutions.

6.6. Sustaining improvements in air quality

Improvements in air quality is one of the positives recorded due to the COVID-19-imposed lockdown as transportation and industrial activities halted. To sustain such improvements, there is the need to facilitate a step change by ramping up the uptake of low emission vehicles through setting more ambitious targets for the embrace of electric vehicles, constructing more electric car charging points as well as encouraging low emissions fuels. This entails heightening investments in cleaner means of public transportation as well as foot and cycle paths for health improvements; redesigning of cities to ensure no proximity to highly polluting roads and the populace as well as preventing highly polluting vehicles from accessing populated areas using classifications such as clear air or low emission zones ( PHE, 2020 ).

Batteries constitute an integral part towards the decarbonisation of road transportation and support the move to a renewable energy system ( World Economic Forum, 2019 ). As such, it is important to establish a battery value chain that is circular, responsible and just, to realise the aforementioned transitions. This entails the identification of the ( World Economic Forum, 2019 ): (i) challenges inhibiting the scaling up of the battery value chain (e.g. battery production processes, risks of raw materials supplies); (ii) levers to mitigate the challenges such as a circular value chain (e.g. design for life extension, implementation of V1G and V2G and scaling up of electric shared and pooled mobility, coupling the transport and power sectors); sustainable business and technology (e.g. increasing the share of renewables and energy efficiency measures across the value chain, effective regulations and financial incentives to support value creation); and a responsible and just value chain based on a balanced view and interplay between environmental, social and economic factors. Indeed, cost-effective and sustainable batteries, as well as an enabling ecosystem for the deployment of battery-enabled renewable energy technologies backed with a dense infrastructure network for charging, will facilitate the transition towards broader acceptance of electric vehicles and by extension guarantees a sustained improvement in air quality ( Masiero et al., 2017 ; PHE, 2020 ; World Economic Forum, 2019 ).We recognize that if all cars are simply replaced by electricones, there will still be the same volume of traffic and an increased need for raw materials, posing significant social, environmental and integrity risks across its value chain. However, CE through the aforementioned levers can address these challenges and support the achievement of a sustainable battery value chain. This will entail lowering emission during manufacturing, eradicating human rights violations, ensuring safe working conditions across the value chain and improving reuse, recycling and remanufacturing ( World Economic Forum, 2019 ).

6.7. Digitalisation for supply chain resilience post COVID-19

Digitalisation of supply chains through leveraging disruptive digital technologies (DDTs) - technologies or tools underpinning smart manufacturing such as the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence, big data analytics, cloud computing and 3D printing - constitute an important step for companies to prepare for and mitigate against the disruptions and attain business resilience amidst global pandemics such as COVID-19. Circular supply chain value drivers’ entails elongation of useful lifespan and maximisation of asset utilisation. Intelligent assets value drivers entail gathering knowledge regarding the location, condition and availability of assets ( Morlet et al., 2016 ). Paring these drivers could provide a broad range of opportunities, which could change the nature of both products and business models, enabling innovation and value creation ( Antikainen et al., 2018 ; Morlet et al., 2016 ). For instance, big data analytics, when adopted properly can aid companies in streamlining their supplier selection processes; cloud-computing is currently being used to facilitate and manage supplier relationships; through automation and the IoT, logistics and shipping processes can be greatly enhanced ( McKenzie, 2020 ). Digitalisation enables predictive maintenance, preventing failures while extending the lifespan of a product across the supply chains. It therefore, constitutes an ideal vehicle for circular supply chains transitioning, providing opportunities to close material loops and improve processes ( Morlet et al., 2016 ; Pagoropoulos et al., 2017 ).

Indeed, COVID-19 has prompted renewed urgency in the adoption of automation and robotics towards mitigating against the disruptive impact on supply chains through restrictions imposed on people's movement. Numerous companies are taking advantage of this to automate their production lines. Prior to COVID-19, momentum towards adopting 5G mobile technology was mounting but delays caused by factors including anticipated use evaluations, security, competition and radio communications regulatory issues limited progress ( McKenzie, 2020 ). It is likely that the experience of COVID-19 may accelerate the provision of regulatory certainty for 5G, which will in turn fast-track the deployment of IoT-enabled devices for remote monitoring, to support supply chain resilience post COVID-19.

Despite the benefits of DDTs, tension exists between their potential benefits (i.e. ability to deliver measurable environmental benefits at an affordable cost), and the problems (i.e. heavy burden imposed during manufacturing and disposal phases of their lifecycle) they constitute, creating rebound effects. As such, the tension between the push for increasing digitalisation and the associated energy costs and environmental impacts should be investigated such that they do not exacerbate the existing problems of resource use and pollution caused by rapid obsolescence and disposal of products containing such technologies. This entails identifying, mapping and mitigating unintended consequences across their supply chains, whilst taking into account technological design embedded within green ethical design processes, to identify environmental sustainability hotspots, both in conception, application and end of life phases.

6.8. Policy measures, incentives and regulatory support for CE transitioning

Becque et al. (2016) in their analysis of the political economy of the CE identified six main types of policy intervention to facilitate, advance and guide the move to a CE by addressing either barriers that aim to fix the market and regulatory failures or encourage market activity. Some of the policy intervention options identified include: (i) education, information and awareness that entails the integration of CE and lifecycle systems thinking into educational curricula supported by public communication and information campaigns; (ii) setting up platforms for collaboration including public-private partnerships with ventures at the local, regional and national levels, encouraging information sharing as well as value chain and inter-sectoral initiatives, establishing research and development to facilitate breakthroughs in materials science and engineering, biomaterials systems etc.; (iii) introduction of sustainability initiatives in public procurement and infrastructure ; (iv) provision of business/financial/technical support schemes such as initial capital outlay, incentive programs, direct subsidies and financial guarantees as well as technical support, training, advice and demonstration of best practices; (v) regulatory frameworks such as regulation of products (including design), extension of warranties and product passports; strategies for waste management including standards and targets for collection and treatments, take-back systems and extended producer responsibility; strategies at the sectoral levels and associated targets for resource productivity and CE; consumer, competition, industry and trade regulations; introduction of standard carbon accounting standards and methodologies; and (vi) fiscal frameworks such as reductions of VAT or excise tax for products and services designed with CE principles.

7. Conclusion

COVID-19 has highlighted the environmental folly of ‘extract-produce-use-dump’ economic model of material and energy flows. Short-term policies to cope with the urgency of the pandemic are unlikely to be sustainable models in the long run. Nonetheless, they shed light on critical issues that deserve emphases, such as the clear link between environmental pollution and transportation/industrialization. The role of unrestricted air travel in spreading pandemics particularly the viral influenza types (of which COVID-19 is one) is not in doubt, with sectors like tourism and aviation being walloped (some airlines may never recover or return to profitability in a long time) due to reduced passenger volumes. The fallout will re-shape the aviation sector, which like tourism has been among the hardest to be hit economically, albeit with desirable outcomes for the reduction in adverse environmental impacts. Peer-to-peer (P2P) or sharing economy models (e.g. Uber, Airbnb) which have birthed a new generation of service providers and employees are found to be non-resilient to global systemic shocks.

The urgency of supply and demand led to a reduction in cargo shipping in favour of airfreights whose transatlantic cost/kg tripled overnight. This is matched by job losses, income inequalities, mass increase in global poverty levels and economic shocks across industries and supply chains. The practicability of remote working (once the domain of technology/service industries) has been tried and tested for specific industries/professions with its associated impacts on reduced commuting for workers. Remote healthcare/telemedicine/ and remote working, in general, is no longer viewed as unfeasible because it has been practiced with success over the best part of a four-month global lockdown period. There was a corresponding reduction in primary energy consumption due to the slowing and shutting down of production and economic activities, and the delivery of education remotely is also no longer questioned. The potential of automation, IoT, and robotics in improving manufacturing processes, as well as the use of cloud computing and big data analytics in streamlining supplier selection processes and management of supplier relationships and logistics are now better appreciated.

The inadequacies of modern healthcare delivery systems to cope with mass casualties and emergencies are universally acknowledged, primarily due to the incapacity of hospital JIT procurement process to provide essential medical and emergency supplies in vast quantities at short notice. This had deadly consequences with thousands of patients and healthcare workers paying the ultimate price for lack of planning and shortfalls in PPE inventory and critical care equipment. Protectionism and in-ward looking policies on exports and tariff reductions/waivers on the importation of raw materials and critical PPE have emphasized the importance of cooperation to cope with shortages, which evolved in tandem with profiteering, thereby emphasizing the role/need for cottage industries to help meet global production of essentials (facemasks, 3D printed parts/equipment, etc.). The increase in infectious hospital wastes due to the pandemic was necessitated by precautionary measures to control the transmission, but proper/advanced sterilization procedures via thermal, microwave, biochemical processes can help in upcycling discarded or retrieved materials and PPE.

Changes in consumer behaviour with social distancing have necessitated a huge increase in online purchasing, which has benefitted the big players but seriously harmed SMEs, who were not exploiting web-based product and service delivery. A CE-based resilience of the consumer food sector was found to require: (i) closing nutrient loops with the use of regenerative agriculture; (ii) value recovery from organic nutrients via anaerobic digestion facilities; (iii) adoption of urban and peri-urban agriculture; and (iv) expanding food collection, redistribution and volarisation facilities. It is believed that CE will facilitate a socially just and inclusive society,driven by the need for resilience and sustainability goals, which could see a rise in bio-economy and sharing economy (SE). The consequences of these would be felt in terms of global cooperation and mutual interests; long-term planning as well as the need to strike an optimum balance between dependence on outsourcing/importation and local manufacturing/productivity. A realignment of value chains is likely to occur because of countries with raw materials exploiting this pandemic for their sustainable growth, and a new world order not shaped by the technological superiority of super-powers is likely to emerge.

During the lockdown, offices and commercial spaces were massively underutilized and the need to increase ventilation rates, e.g. in hospitals is leading to more energy consumption. However, there are opportunities to (re)design buildings to have movable walls for adaptable use. The use of modular techniques for fast construction of buildings that can be disassembled and re-configured for new needs, as demonstrated in China, is likely to increase. Renovation and refurbishment will witness a renewed vigour as existing buildings get a new lease of life with reduced carbon emissions and new jobs being created. Nonetheless, integrating circularity (product durability, energy efficiency, recyclability, etc.) via design thinking is essential from the onset if all these potential benefits are to be achieved. Digital technologies will play a crucial role in ensuring the low carbon and energy-efficient future of the built environment.

Governments are recognizing the need for national-level CE policies in many aspects, such as: (a) reducing over-reliance on other manufacturing countries for essential goods as massive shortages forced the unwitting adoption of CE principles such as re-use; (b) intensive research into bio-based materials for the development of biodegradable products and the promotion of bio-economy; (c) legal framework for local, regional and national authorities to promote green logistics and waste management regulations which incentivize local production and manufacturing; and (d) development of compact smart cities for effective mobility (with social distancing considerations) as well as enabling environment for shared mobility options (e.g. ride-shares) and active mobility options (e.g. bicycling, walking).

Going forward, resilience thinking should guide lessons learnt and innovations emanating from circular thinking should target the general well-being of the populace and not merely focus on boosting the competitiveness, profitability or growth of businesses and national economies. The post-COVID-19 investments needed to accelerate towards more resilient, low carbon and circular economies should also be integrated into the stimulus packages for economic recovery being promised by governments, since the shortcomings in the dominant linear economic model are now recognized and the gaps to be closed are known.

Credit author statement

IMT, MKB and GJ conceived the idea. IMT developed the methodological notes. IMT, MKB, AZ & FH conducted the analysis. IMT, MKB, AZ, BKA, ADD, AA and FH designed the structure and outline of the paper. All authors contributed to the writing the paper, with comments and feedback from GJ and KSCL.

Declaration of Competing Interest

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Americans More Upbeat on the Economy; Biden’s Job Rating Remains Very Low

1. views of the nation’s economy, table of contents.

• The economy, past and future; top concerns
• Biden’s job performance, personal traits
• Other findings on partisan compromise and the House GOP impeachment inquiry
• Why do Americans rate the nation’s economy as they do?
• Cost of goods, housing remain top economic concerns
• Partisans’ views of Biden’s personal characteristics
• Perceptions of Biden over time
• Biden’s job approval ratings
• Biden’s presidency in the long run
• Acknowledgments
• The American Trends Panel survey methodology

About three-in-ten Americans (28%) currently rate national economic conditions as excellent or good, while a similar share (31%) say they are poor and about four-in-ten (41%) view them as “only fair.”

While ratings remain substantially lower than they were prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic , they are more positive than they were last spring – when just 19% viewed the economy in positive terms.

Expectations for future economic conditions are also more positive than they were last spring: Today, roughly a quarter say that they expect economic conditions will be better a year from now (26%) – up from 17% in April 2023.

At the same time, the share who says conditions will be worse has declined by 13 percentage points. About four-in-ten say they expect conditions will be about the same.

As has long been the case , partisans who share the party of the president have more positive views of economic conditions than those who support the opposing party. Today, 44% of Democrats and Democratic leaners say the nation’s economy is excellent or good. This compares with 13% of Republicans and GOP leaners.

Similarly, Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say they expect economic conditions a year from now will be better than they are today: 34% of Democrats say this, compared with 20% of Republicans.

There are substantial differences among Democrats in views of the nation’s economy – particularly by age and income.

Younger Democrats are much less likely than older Democrats to view current economic conditions in positive terms. Among Democrats under 30, a quarter view the economy positively. This share rises to 34% among those ages 30 to 49, 56% among those 50 to 64, and 70% among those 65 and older.

There are also significant differences by race and ethnicity. White Democrats are more likely than Black, Hispanic and Asian Democrats to say the economy is excellent or good.

Democrats in different income groups also diverge in their evaluations of the nation’s economy. Democrats with higher household incomes are more positive about economic conditions than Democrats with lower incomes. A clear majority of upper-income Democrats (60%) say the economy is doing excellent or good. By comparison, 32% of those with lower incomes view the economy positively, while a majority say it is only fair (40%) or poor (28%).

Across Republican groups, economic assessments vary less drastically. Republicans overwhelmingly rate the economy negatively: Just 15% or less across demographic groups say national economic conditions are good or excellent.

However, there are some differences in how negative GOP assessments are. For instance, upper-income Republicans are more likely to say the economy is doing only fair (48%) rather than poorly (36%), while lower-income Republicans are more likely to say poor (49%) rather than only fair (38%).

In an open-ended question which asked Americans to explain the reasons for their overall evaluation of the nation’s economy (as excellent, good, only fair, or poor), people provide wide-ranging answers.

Among the 28% of Americans who say the nation’s economy is doing excellent or good, many offer overwhelmingly positive reasons for why they rate the economy this way. A large share (43%) note the country’s low unemployment, while 18% say that inflation is coming down or is lower than it has been in recent months. Roughly one-in-ten mention wage growth, while a similar share (9%) say strong stock market performance contributes to their rating. And 5% say the reason for their rating is that the U.S. is outperforming expectations or otherwise doing better than other countries in terms of economic growth.

Among the 72% of adults who say the economy is doing only fair or poor, most offer negative reasons for why they rate the economy the way they do. Those who say the economy is only fair are slightly more likely to offer a mix of positive and negative responses than those who say the economy is poor . However, respondents in both groups offer similar reasons for their ratings.

Among those who say the nation’s economy is only fair or poor, high inflation or high costs of various goods are frequently mentioned: 28% say high inflation is a main reason they evaluate the economy as only fair or poor, while roughly two-in-ten cite the high cost of living. Along this same theme, 6% point to the high cost of food and groceries while identical shares say the high cost of housing and high interest rates are a main reason they view the economy as doing only fair or poor.

Other issues are also mentioned: 15% say the lack of good paying jobs or low wages is a major reason for their rating while 7% point to the national debt and government spending. Another 5% give a negative response about Biden’s or Democrats’ economic policies more broadly.

Majorities of Americans continue to express a high level of concern about the price of food and consumer goods (72% say they are very concerned about this) and the cost of housing (64%). About half (51%) say they are very concerned about the price of gasoline and energy. More than eight-in-ten say they are at least somewhat concerned about each of these economic issues.

Other economic issues rank lower on the public’s list of concerns. Smaller shares of Americans say they are very concerned about the stability of banks and financial institutions (27%), people who want to work being unable to find jobs (31%) or the performance of the stock market (18%).

Majorities in both parties are very concerned about the cost of goods and housing

Republicans and Democrats are fairly aligned in their economic concerns. Majorities in both groups say they are very concerned about the cost of food, consumer goods and housing. And substantially smaller shares express concern about the stability of banks or the performance of the stock market.

However, Republican concern about the price of food and consumer goods is more widespread than Democratic concern (82% vs. 63%). And the partisan gap on concerns about the price of gasoline and energy is even wider: A 64% majority of Republicans say they are very concerned about the cost of gas, compared with 40% of Democrats.

Partisans’ expectations for the year ahead

As has been the case for the last three years , Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say the upcoming year will be better than the last. Two-thirds of Democrats say 2024 will be better than 2023, while 43% of Republicans say the same.

This dynamic in feelings about the new year – with Democrats expressing more optimism than Republicans – has held true since 2021. Then, 83% of Democrats said 2021 would be better than 2020 while 48% of Republicans agreed. In 2020, the pattern was the reverse. Republicans were more likely to say 2020 would be better than 2019 compared with Democrats (78% vs. 36%, respectively).

In Pew Research Center surveys dating back to 2006 (when the question was first asked), Americans who identify with or lean toward the president’s party have tended to be more optimistic about the coming year than those who associate with the opposing party.

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Economics Essay Topics: 162 Practical Ideas & Useful Tips

Essay writing is an inherent part of the economics studying process. Nevertheless, it is quite a challenging task. Are you a high school or college student who is struggling with an economic essay topic choice? Or maybe you are unsure about your writing skills?

We know how to help you .

The following article will guide you in choosing the best topic for your essay on economics. Here, you can find a variety of ideas for high school or college. The economic essay topics are divided into several categories that will help you with your research. And a pleasant bonus from our team! We have created a great guide on how to write an economics essay.

So, don’t miss your chance to write an outstanding economic paper! Check out our essay ideas, read our tips carefully, and be ready to receive your grade A!

• ⭐ Best Economic Topics
• 🤝 Socio-Economic
• 🗺️ International Economics
• 🛠️ Labor Economics
• 🌆 Urban Economics
• ⚽ Sports Economics
• 💉 Health Economics
• 💼 Business Economics
• 🏤 Globalization
• 🧮 Economic History
• 💫 How to Write?

⭐ 15 Best Economic Essay Topics

• 2008 Economic Crisis.
• Socio-economic policy.
• Economic systems – Singapore.
• Racial pay gap.
• Economic globalization.
• History of online trading.
• Child labor policies.
• The Economic Naturalist.
• Foundations of economic theory.
• Impact of unemployment.
• Universal Basic Income.
• The role of consumerism.
• Healthcare economics – Canada’s Medicare.
• Reasons for recession.
• Cryptocurrency & environmental issues.

✨ Excellent Economic Essay Topics

Has economics always been a subject of meticulous research? The question is quite controversial, right? There is no specific time when economics started its rapid progress. Generally, economics remains the topic of interest since the establishment of capitalism in the Western world.

Nowadays, the economy is the main engine that moves our world forward. The way we do business determines the geopolitical situation in the world. Moreover, it influences many other parts of our lives.

Economics studying is of utmost importance nowadays. It helps to gain a better understanding of processes that put everything in motion.

Economics is quite broad, so it has a great variety of subfields. And this is a fantastic opportunity for us to generate as many essay ideas as possible. Here, you will find great economic topics for your paper. As mentioned before, we have divided them into several sections to ease your selection process. There’s a wide selection of free college essays samples on economics in our database, too. So be sure to check that out.

🤝 Socio-Economic Essay Topics

• The economic impact of racial segregation in America in the 1950s.
• Designing a just socio-economic system.
• Socio-economic status of Hong Kong in modern-day China. Explain how the city of Hong Kong gained a special status in China. Why did it emerge as one of the most important cities in its economy? Comment on the significance of Hong Kong in the international economic arena.
• Economic growth in the United States in the post-World War 2 period.
• Mobile banking in Saudi Arabia: towards understanding the factors that affect the sector.
• The importance of Dior’s bar suit to the women’s fashion industry.
• Economic problems in the 1980’s Soviet Union. Talk about the significant problems with the economy the USSR had in the 1980s. What role did they play in its collapse?
• What socio-economic problems did segregation in South Africa cause?
• History of economic development in the UAE. Discuss the economic miracle in the UAE and Dubai. Explain how the government could turn the city of Dubai into one of the most famous tourist destinations. What strategies were applied?
• Gender inequality and socio-economic development .
• The problem of poverty in Venezuela.
• How the socio-economic and political position of women changed between 1880 and 1940.
• The economic impact of COVID-19 on global trade.

• How do the three main economic groups interact with each other? There are three critical economic groups: – Consumers – Producers – Government Analyze the interaction of these groups with each other.
• Extended essay: how the study of economic data helped our society to advance?
• Western industrialization socio-economic impacts.
• Inequality at the top: not all billionaires have the same powers. Analyze billionaires’ net worth, liquidity, political power, and wealth security. Explain why they have unequal social status. What factors determine the influence of billionaires?
• An analysis of systems that help us measure agricultural development in a country.
• Is social media a useful tool for brand promotion?
• The phenomenon of dualism in economic development.

🗺️ International Economics Essay Topics

• Globalization and its impact on international economic relations. Define the term globalization. What role does globalization play in international economic relations? Provide specific examples of globalization’s impact on the global political economy.
• The lack of justice for the cheap international labor market. Discuss the issue of cheap labor in various countries. Why do some workers often lack fundamental human rights while others abuse moral norms? Analyze the causes and effects of inequality in the workplace.
• Japan macroeconomics: problems and possible solutions.
• The issue of mercantilism in the history of Great Britain. Analyze the rise and development of mercantilism in the history of Great Britain. To solidify your ideas, provide persuasive arguments, and appropriate examples of mercantilism.
• Why does the problem of environmental protection remain unresolved among global economies?
• Nissan Motor company’s international business.
• International environmental concerns in economics: the case of China .
• The issue of international criminal justice in industry. Explain why international businesses often avoid criminal justice after wrongdoings. Select one case of unethical behavior of a company’s CEO or regular employee. Briefly introduce the problem. What were the causes and effects? How was the issue resolved? Express your own opinion regarding the lack of criminal justice in business.
• The economy of Singapore and its role in international trade.
• International microeconomics trade dispute case study: US-China dispute on the exportation of raw materials.
• The phenomenon of the “gig economy” and its impact on the global economy.
• The effect of population growth in the international economy.
• International economics in the context of globalization.

• How does Brexit affect the economy of the European Union? Analyze the immediate impact of Brexit on the EU’s economy. Predict future advantages and disadvantages of Brexit for both: Great Britain and the EU.
• South Africa: international agribusiness, trade, and financing.
• Historical essay: the economy of the Dutch East India company.
• The issue of Mozambique’s economy and possible solutions. Investigate the issue of extreme poverty in Mozambique. What are some possible solutions to the problem of poverty? Base your suggestions on the country’s cultural, historical, and geographical aspects.
• Imbalances in the global economy. Discuss the imbalances between trading countries on the scale of the global economy. What solutions would you suggest to deal with this issue?
• How will global economies adapt to China’s growing power?
• Etihad Airways company managerial economics.

🛠️ Labor Economics Essay Topics

• Ford Motor company’s labor economics.
• Labor economics: child labor.
• The UPS firm perspective: the labor market.
• Gender inequality of wage rate in modern business. Research how and why gender inequality is still an issue in the modern world of economics. What are some ways to deal with the problem? Present your ideas accurately and effectively. Provide solid arguments and appropriate examples to prove your position.
• What are the best ways to increase labor productivity in business?
• Labor unions adverse effects on economics.
• The decrease of the labor force in modern industries. Talk about the rising rates of robotization in the majority of industries. How will it affect the traditional labor force? Comment on the problem of unemployment caused by labor automatization.
• Violations of labor rights of workers.
• Modern labor essay: how can an entrepreneur guarantee the minimum wage to their workers?
• How can labor geography help develop a special economic zone? Talk about labor geography and its effects on developing an exclusive economic zone. How does the geopolitical location of a particular country influence its level of economic development?
• Entrepreneurship in the organic cosmetics sphere.
• Gender-oriented labor trade unions. A case study. Discuss the gender-oriented trade unions and analyze their impact on our society.
• Child labor in the Turkish cotton industry.

• The connection between economic growth and demography. Analyze the connection between economic growth and its demographic context. Investigate both sides: – The issue of overpopulation – The problem of low birth rate. From an economic perspective, what problem is more dangerous?
• The issue of sex discrimination in the workplace.
• The effects of Landrum-Griffin Labor Act. Explore the labor Act of Landrum-Griffin that was passed in the US Congress in 1959. Discuss its implications and consequences. Discuss its implications and consequences.

🌆 Urban Economics Essay Topics

• Cities and their role in aggregate economics.
• Urbanization in Hong Kong and its effects on citizens.
• The urban planning of the city of New York: a critical analysis. Analyze the urban history of NY. How has the city been developing? Discuss revolutionary solutions to the past and problems of modern times.
• The impact of a city’s design on the local traffic.
• Dubai’s spatial planning: creative solutions for building a city in the desert.
• Globalization, urban political economy, and economic restructuring.
• How do urban areas affect local wildlife? Comment on how modern production technologies in urban areas impact the natural diversity of wildlife. What impact does the rapid economic progress have on the environment? Suggest possible solutions.
• Urban sociology: does the city make us better people?
• Why should people be more careful about investing in real estate? Discuss the issues of overinvestment into real estate. Consider the economic crisis of 2008 as an example.
• How can regional authorities help improve a city?
• Urban life and its effects on education.
• The economic development of a city’s metropolitan area: challenges and solutions.
• Main factors for the emergence of cities in the Middle Ages.
• The ethics of relocation: is it justified? Talk about the case of relocating locals when building projects of great magnitude. To what extent can it be justified? Mention its economic and ethical side.
• The difficulties behind the construction of “green” buildings. Discuss the relatively new phenomenon of environmentally friendly buildings. Analyze both sides: the pros and cons. What obstacles lie behind the “green” building? What opportunities do the “green” buildings offer? Elaborate on your ideas by providing clear arguments or counterarguments.
• What factors play a critical role in the success of retail productivity in cities?

⚽ Sports Economics Essay Topics

• Do teams with higher budgets perform better on the field?
• Corruption in European football leagues: a critical analysis. Investigate the corruption issue in the European football leagues. State reasons and solutions for the problem.
• The managerial catastrophe of Arsenal F.C.

• The NextG sports company’s communication planning.
• Roger D. Blair’s Sports Economics literary review. Write a literary analysis of Sports Economics by Roger D. Blair. Discuss his opinion on the economy of sports. Do you agree or disagree with his position? Provide compelling supportive arguments or strong counterarguments.
• How significant is the impact factor of a local team on a city’s economy?
• Kinsmen Sports Centre: marketing metrics innovation.
• What role does statistical data play in sports? Analyze the part of economic statistical data in different sports organizations. How can statistics help to develop an effective financing plan? Comment on the impact of financing on the performance of a sports club.
• Sports and energy drinks marketing analysis.
• Is there a connection between the lack of money and any contemporary issues in a sports team?
• Performance-enhancing drugs in sports.
• The business of FIFA: a financial analysis. Investigate the finances of FIFA. What economic factors make them so influential in the modern world of football?
• The global sports retail industry.
• The Olympics: logistics and economy. Discuss the logistics behind the Olympics Games event. How the Olympic Games impact the economy of the host country?

💉 Health Economics Essay Topics

• Is bioprinting the new future of medicine? Analyze the new market of organ printing and discuss its challenges. Investigate bioprinting from an economic perspective. Will the outputs cover the inputs? How will bioprinting impact the financial aspect of the health care sector?
• Cost-effectiveness of pharmaceutical products in the United States. Comment on the immense cost-effectiveness of pharmaceuticals. What do you think is the price of pharmaceutical products reasonable? Is it ethical to set extremely high prices on the medicals?
• An economic evaluation of the antibiotics market.
• Health economics-SIC and NAICS.
• The financial side of cancer treatment: is it too expensive? Analyze the market for cancer treatment programs in various countries. Explore its costs and complications. What are some possible ways to reduce the price of cancer treatment and make it more affordable?
• The issue of fast food consumption: a multibillion-dollar market . Fast food has always been one of the notable causes of obesity, diabetes, and other illnesses. Investigate the economic aspect of the issue. Are high profits from fast food production worth peoples’ health conditions?
• History and evolution of healthcare economics.

• The financial management of a hospital: a case study.
• The issue of public healthcare in the USA. Write about the long-standing issue of medical sector operation in the USA. Analyze its history, financial, and social aspects.
• Demand in healthcare economics.
• What are the economic outcomes of a global pandemic? Taking the COVID-19 outbreak as an example, conduct research on the effects of a pandemic on the economy. How does it affect local economies? What impact does the quarantine have on the international economy? Provide appropriate examples to support your ideas.

💼 Business Economics Essay Topics

• When does an advertising campaign become unnecessary?
• Sustainable development of a nation’s economic stability. Discuss how a country can create a sustainable economy. Provide bright examples to solidify your position.
• How can a small business compete with monopolies?
• What are the limitations of the Lewis Model?
• The phenomenon of inflation: inevitable liability or a land of opportunity for our economies? Explore the process of inflation in modern economies. Does it only have adverse effects on the countries’ economies? Are there any advantages of inflation? Analyze it from a positive perspective.
• Economics, business, and sugar in the UK.
• The shadow economy of the finance sector. Dive into the backstage of the finance sector and research various “grey” areas where business can be done.
• Chinese and Japanese business systems comparison.
• Oil demand and its changes in the XXI century: a critical analysis. Analyze the oil sector and write about its fluctuation in the XXI century. How did the changes in oil demand affect the global economy?
• The social and economic impact of mass emigration.

🌠 40 More Good Economic Essay Topics

Scrolled through our ideas, but can’t find a suitable topic for yourself? No worries! We have more issues to share with you.

So, don’t stress out. Take a look at our list of economical essay topics. Here are 40 more ideas focusing on globalization and the history of economics.

🏤 Economic Globalization Essay Topics

• The impact of globalization on the tourist industry in the Caribbean . Analyze both: the positive and negative effects of globalization on the Caribbean. To make your paper well-structured, explore two advantages and two disadvantages. Don’t forget to improve your essay with strong evidence and appropriate examples!
• Toyota Motor Corporation: impacts of globalization.
• What are the effects of globalization on developing countries? To what extent do developing countries profit from globalization? Research the subject by comparing various examples.
• Defining globalization and its effects on current trade.
• Economic growth as a result of globalization: proper financial strategies. How can a country successfully achieve prosperity with globalization? Discuss proper economic strategies.
• The socio-political significance of the IT industry’s globalization.
• Human trafficking in developing nations as a result of globalization.

• Globalization and criminal justice policy.
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of globalization?
• Globalization challenges and countermeasures.
• The effect of globalization on worldwide trade and employment rates.
• Economic integration within the European Union: a critical analysis. Talk about the history of economic integration within the EU. What are the negative and positive outcomes of economic integration?
• Globalization and food in Japan.
• Does globalization bring negative effects to cultural heritage and identity?
• The Industrial Revolution as the first step towards globalization. Focus on the Industrial Revolution in Europe. Discuss its precursors and consequences. Why is the revolution considered to be a starting point of globalization? Provide specific examples of globalization processes that occurred in the economic sector after the Industrial revolution.
• Globalization 2.0 an analysis of a book by David Rieff.
• Globalization effects on fundamentalism growth.
• Does direct investment by foreign businesses come with strings attached? Dive into the shady area of globalization and discuss how to direct foreign investment can bring problems of geopolitical scale.
• Effects of globalization on sexuality.
• Alibaba’s globalization strategy: an economic analysis.

🧮 Economic History Essay Topics

• The rapid economic growth of Europe during the Age of Discovery. Analyze the factors that brought economic growth to Europe during the Age of Discovery. What factors contributed to the dynamic economic progress of that time?
• Brazil’s economic history.
• History of capitalism: from the Renaissance to the United States of America. Discuss the origins of capitalism and its centuries-long path towards XXth century America. How the establishment of capitalism impacted the economy of the USA?
• Max Weber: economic history, the theory of bureaucracy, and politics as a vocation.
• 2008 Economic Crisis: origins and fallout. Talk about the 2008 Financial Crisis. Discuss its causes and outcomes. What should have been done differently to avoid the global crisis? Comment on the economic strategies countries used to recover from it.
• The economic marvel of Communist China: from rags to riches.
• What made world economic growth of the Renaissance possible?

• The economic history of Canada: how did the settlers facilitate economic growth?
• What did the major powers of the XIXth century base their economies on?
• The Rothschilds: political and financial role in the Industrial Revolution. Research the dynasty of Rothschilds and how they came to power. What was their role in Europe’s Industrial Revolution?
• The link between the “oil curse” and the economic history of Latin America.
• Roman Empire’s monetary policy: a socio-economic analysis.
• How did the demand for different goods change their value in the 2000s years? Analyze the demand for goods in the 2000s years and their change in value. Why do these fluctuations in demand for products and services occur?
• The history of economic thought.
• Soviet Union’s economic timeline: from the new Economic Policy to Reformation. Discuss the economic issues of the Soviet Union from the historical perspective. Why did the Soviet Union collapse? What improvements in the financial sector should have been done?
• History of France economics over the past 20 years.
• The history of economic analysis.
• The concept of serfdom and slavery as the main economic engine of the past. Dive into the idea of feudalism and serfdom. Discuss its social and economic aspects.
• The World Bank’s structure, history, activities.
• The history of Islamic banking: concepts and ideas.

💫 How to Write an Economics Essay?

Generally, essay writing on economics has the same structure as any other essay. However, there are some distinctive features of economic papers. Thus, it is essential to figure them out from the very beginning of your work.

You might be wondering what those aspects of the economic paper are. Well, we have an answer.

Below, you will find a detailed plan that explains the fundamental concepts of the essay writing process. So, don’t hesitate to use our tips! They are indeed helpful.

Pick a topic and dissect it. Picking the right topic is the very basis of writing a successful essay. Think of something that you will be interested in and make sure you understand the issue clearly. Also, don’t forget to check our ultimate economics essay topics and samples list!

Research it. After selecting the right idea from our economical essay topics, research your subject thoroughly. Try to find every fascinating and intriguing detail about it. Remember that you can always ask your fellow students, friends, or a teacher for help.

Come up with a thesis statement. A thesis statement is an essential element of your essay. It will determine your focus and guide the readers throughout your paper. Make your thesis secure and try to catch the reader’s attention using context and word choice.

Outline your essay. Never underestimate the power of a well-structured outline! Creating an essay outline can significantly help you to determine your general plan. Evaluate which economic framework you will be using to address the issue. State the main points of your thesis and antithesis. Make sure that they answer the central question of your work.

Write your introduction. First and foremost, a practical introduction should capture the readers’ attention and state the essay’s key topic. So, put enough effort to develop an outstanding introduction. It will create the first impression of your paper.

Moreover, an introduction should include a thesis statement. As we have mentioned above, a thesis plays a crucial role. Thus, make sure it is clearly stated.

Another significant feature of the introduction is its coherence with the body of your essay. Consequently, the introductory paragraph’s last statement has to present the subject of the next section, generically. Also, keep in mind that no more than three key points can be discussed in a paper, even if it is an extended essay.

Thoroughly work on the body paragraphs. Usually, the body of the essay contains several paragraphs. The number of these paragraphs will depend on the nature of your question. Be sure to create one section for every critical point that you make. This will make your paper properly-structured, and the reader will quickly get your ideas. For your convenience, we created a plan to develop your ideas in each paragraph, So, use it and make your writing process easier!

• Argument. Present your argument in the topic sentence of the paragraph in a way that directly answers the question. A hint: the most effective way to introduce the critical point is to place the topic sentence at the beginning of the paragraph. This will help the readers to concentrate their attention on a specific idea.
• Comment and discussion. Explain the meaning of your argument and provide an economic analysis. Present clear evidence and persuasive arguments to solidify your position.
• Connection. Link your comments with the vital point of the paragraph. Demonstrate the coherence of your evidence with the point.
• Diagrams, tables, charts. If necessary, provide the reader with visual aids. Sometimes, an appropriate diagram or a suitable chart can say more than words. Besides, your paper will look more professional if you use any kind of visual aids.

Conclude your essay. In your conclusion, summarize and synthesize your work by restating your thesis. Also, it is crucial to strengthen it by mentioning the practical value of your findings. Remember to make your essay readable by choosing appropriate wording and avoiding too complex grammar constructions.

Thank you for visiting our page! Did you enjoy our article and learned something new? We are glad to help you. Don’t forget to leave a comment and share the article with others!

🔗 References

• High School Economics Topics: Econlib, The Library of Economics and Liberty
• Guide to Writing an Economics Essay: The Economics Tutor
• How to Write the Introduction of Your Development Economics Paper: David Evans, Center For Global Development
• Senior Essay: Department of Economics, Yale University
• Developing A Thesis: Maxine Rodburg and The Tutors of the Writing Center at Harvard University
• Academic Essay Writing, Some Guidelines: Department of Economics, Carleton University
• The Writing Process: Writing Centre Resource Guide, LibGuides at Dalhousie University
• Research Papers: KU Writing Center, the University of Kansas
• Unpacking the Topic: University of Southern Queensland
• Economic Issues: PIIE, Peterson Institute for International Economics
• Areas of Research: EPI, Economic Policy Institute
• Top 100 Economics Blogs Of 2023: Prateek Agarwal, Intelligent Economist
• Current Environmental Economic Topics, Environmental Economics: US EPA, United States Environmental Protection Agency
• Hot Topics in the U.S. Economy: The Balance
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How to Write an Essay about a Country

In this tutorial, you will learn how to write an essay about any country.

This method will work for a paper you have to write for Sociology, Economics, a History class, or for any other discipline you can imagine.

The biggest challenge when writing an essay is coming up with material.

And the easiest way to keep your ideas flowing is to break your topic into subtopics.

Let’s see how this works.

Our subject is a country. Any country.

How would we go about breaking the idea of a country into aspects or parts?

What are some of the parts a country may have?

The easiest way to break up a topic is to use the Power of Three!

And which three aspects are relevant to any country? Which three things does any country have?

• Any country has a political aspect. Politics is all about the government. It answers the question, “What are the political forces and relationships among them?”
• Any country has a social aspect. This part of the paper will answer the question, “How do people live in this country?” The social aspect is about the people of the country.
• “What are the major economic forces in this country”
• “How do they shape the country?”
• “Is the country going through an economic hardship?”

These are three wonderful ways to discuss and to structure an essay about a country.

What else can we do?

We can talk about a country in terms of the past, the present, and the future. Let’s see what this looks like.

• The past. This section will answer the question, “How was this country in the past?”
• The present. This section will the answer the question, “How is the country doing today?”
• The future. This part will answer the question, “What can be predicted about this country?”

Again, this is a wonderful way to discuss any country.

You can combine these different aspects to form a longer essay.

In fact, you can write as long an essay as you want.

Let’s say we’re writing about a country in terms of the past, the present and the future. What could we write about in each section?

We are already using the Power of Three to create the main structure. Now we can use the Power of Three to break up each of the sections into three subsections.

• And we can talk about the political, social ,and economic aspects in section 1 about the past. In other words, how was this country in the past politically, socially, and economically?
• In the next section, we discuss how this country fares in the present politically, socially, and economically.
• And finally, what can be predicted about this country politically, socially, and economically?

Hope this makes sense.

You can actually do this differently. You can have three sections that are devoted to politics, society, and economics.

You can still use the Power of Three, and you can use it in reverse.

• In the first section , you would talk about the past, the present, and the future of this country in terms of politics.
• In the next section , you would talk about the society in the past, in the present, and in the future.
• And in the final section , you would talk about the past, the present and the future of this country’s economy.

Note that countries have a lot more different aspects to them. For example, you can discuss any country in terms of:

• Ethnic diversity

You can use any of these aspects. Just don’t forget to use the Power of Three to make your life easier 🙂

If you struggle with essay writing in general, check out this tutorial I wrote on essay writing for beginners .

How to Write a Thesis Statement – Tutorial with Examples

6 simple ways to improve sentence structure in your essays, essay writing for beginners: 6-step guide with examples, 10 solid essay writing tips to help you improve quickly, how to expand an essay – 4 tips to increase the word count.

Tutor Phil is an e-learning professional who helps adult learners finish their degrees by teaching them academic writing skills.

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Guest Essay

China’s Dead-End Economy Is Bad News for Everyone

By Anne Stevenson-Yang

Ms. Stevenson-Yang is a co-founder of J Capital Research and the author of “Wild Ride: A Short History of the Opening and Closing of the Chinese Economy.”

On separate visits to Beijing last month, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen bore a common message : Chinese manufacturing overcapacity is flooding global markets with cheap Chinese exports, distorting world trade and leaving American businesses and workers struggling to compete.

Not surprisingly, China’s leaders did not like what they heard, and they didn’t budge. They can’t. Years of erratic and irresponsible policies, excessive Communist Party control and undelivered promises of reform have created a dead-end Chinese economy of weak domestic consumer demand and slowing growth. The only way that China’s leaders can see to pull themselves out of this hole is to fall back on pumping out exports.

That means a number of things are likely to happen, none of them good. The tide of Chinese exports will continue, tensions with the United States and other trading partners will grow, China’s people will become increasingly unhappy with their gloomy economic prospects and anxious Communist Party leaders will respond with more repression.

The root of the problem is the Communist Party’s excessive control of the economy, but that’s not going to change. It is baked into China’s political system and has only worsened during President Xi Jinping’s decade in power. New strategies for fixing the economy always rely on counterproductive mandates set by the government: Create new companies, build more industrial capacity. The strategy that most economists actually recommend to drive growth — freeing up the private sector and empowering Chinese consumers to spend more — would mean overhauling the way the government works, and that is unacceptable.

The party had a golden opportunity to change in 1989, when the Tiananmen Square protests revealed that the economic reforms that had begun a decade earlier had given rise to a growing private sector and a desire for new freedoms. But to liberalize government institutions in response would have undermined the party’s power. Instead, China’s leaders chose to shoot the protesters, further tighten party control and get hooked on government investment to fuel the economy.

For a long time, no one minded. When economic or social threats reared their heads, like global financial crises in 1997 and 2007, Chinese authorities poured money into industry and the real estate sector to pacify the people. The investment-driven growth felt good, but it was much more than the country could digest and left China’s landscape scarred with empty cities and industrial parks, unfinished bridges to nowhere, abandoned highways and amusement parks, and airports with few flights.

The investment in industrial capacity also generated an explosion in exports as China captured industries previously dominated by foreign manufacturers — mobile phones, television sets, solar panels, lithium-ion batteries and electric vehicles. Much of the Chinese economic “miracle” was powered by American, European and Japanese companies that willingly transferred their technical know-how to their Chinese partners in exchange for what they thought would be access to a permanently growing China market. This decimated manufacturing in the West, even as China protected its own markets. But the West let it slide: The cheap products emanating from China kept U.S. inflation at bay for a generation, and the West clung to the hope that China’s economic expansion would eventually lead to a political liberalization that never came.

To raise money for the government investment binge, Beijing allowed local authorities to collateralize land — all of which is ultimately owned or controlled by the state — and borrow money against it. This was like a drug: Local governments borrowed like crazy, but with no real plan for paying the money back. Now many are so deep in debt that they have been forced to cut basic services like heating, health care for senior citizens and bus routes . Teachers aren’t being paid on time, and salaries for civil servants have been lowered in recent years. Millions of people all over China are paying mortgages on apartments that may never be finished . Start-ups are folding , and few people, it seems, can find jobs.

To boost employment, the party over the past couple of years has been telling local governments to push the establishment of new private businesses, with predictable consequences: In one county in northern China, a village secretary eager to comply with Beijing’s wishes reportedly asked relatives and friends to open fake companies. One villager opened three tofu shops in a week; another person applied for 20 new business licenses.

When mandates like that fail to create jobs, the party monkeys with the employment numbers. When monthly government data revealed last year that 21 percent of Chinese youth in urban areas were unemployed, authorities stopped publishing the figures. It resumed early this year, but with a new methodology for defining unemployment . Presto! The number dropped to 15 percent.

But Mr. Xi’s policy options are dwindling.

With the real estate market imploding, the government can no longer risk goosing the property sector. It has begun touting a revival in domestic consumption , but many Chinese are merely hunkering down and hoarding assets such as gold against an uncertain future. So the government is again falling back on manufacturing, pouring money into industrial capacity in hopes of pushing out more products to keep the economy going. With domestic demand anemic, many of those products have to be exported.

But the era when China was able to take over whole industries without foreign pushback is over. Many countries are now taking steps to protect their markets from Chinese-made goods. Under U.S. pressure, Mexico’s government last month reportedly decided it would not award subsidies to Chinese electric vehicle makers seeking to manufacture in Mexico for export to the U.S. market; the European Union is considering action to prevent Chinese electric vehicles from swamping its market; and the Biden administration has moved to encourage semiconductor manufacturing in the United States and limit Chinese access to chip technologies, and has promised more actions to thwart China.

China won’t be able to innovate its way out of this. Its economic model still largely focuses on cheaply replicating existing technologies, not on the long-term research that results in industry-leading commercial breakthroughs. All that leaves is manufacturing in volume.

China’s leaders will face rising economic pressure to lower the value of the renminbi, which will make Chinese-made goods even cheaper in U.S. dollar terms, further boosting export volume and upsetting trading partners even more. But a devaluation will also make imports of foreign products and raw materials more expensive, squeezing Chinese consumers and businesses while encouraging wealthier people to get their money out of China. The government can’t turn to economic stimulus measures to revive growth — pouring more renminbi into the economy would risk crushing the currency’s value.

All of this means that the “reform and opening” era, which has transformed China and captivated the world since it began in the late 1970s, has ended with a whimper.

Mao Zedong once said that in an uncertain world, the Chinese must “Dig tunnels deep, store grain everywhere and never seek hegemony.” That sort of siege mentality is coming back.

Anne Stevenson-Yang ( @doumenzi ) is a co-founder and the research director of J Capital Research, a stock analysis firm. She spent 25 years in China as an entrepreneur, analyst and trade advocate.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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Fresh off a holiday, new data on China's economy gives cause for hope

Scott Simon

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The Chinese government just released new economic data following the big May holiday week. Our correspondent reports from Shanghai about how the world's second largest economy is faring.

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Rick Scott's one-man rally for Trump exposes GOP abandonment

There has been remarkably little public support for donald trump during his first criminal trial, by heather digby parton.

There have been a lot of raised eyebrows over the fact that with the exception of one appearance by his son Eric, Donald Trump's family is not present to support him at his criminal trial in Manhattan. Normally you would see the wife and the adult kids lined up behind the defendant to show a united front, even if the subject at hand was uncomfortable.  There really isn't such a thing as a pleasant criminal trial but it's something that is commonly done and I would certainly have thought that it would be wise in this case, since he's running for president and all. It would have been especially useful to at least see Melania and Ivanka playing the trad-wife and loyal daughter, suggesting by their presence that their man can do no wrong in their eyes. They're supposed to be Republicans, after all. 

Why MAGA hasn't turned up to support him in his moment of need when there always seems to be a few thousand who like to go to his rallies is a mystery but it clearly has Trump feeling down in the dumps.

But how could they? Everyone knows that his cultivated image of a wealthy playboy who wined and dined beautiful women like he was some kind of matinee idol is another one of his lies. This man had a casting couch routine more in the mold of a creepy Harvey Weinstein than a glamorous Tony Stark and they know it. 

Trump is intensely frustrated over the fact that because of the judge's gag order, he is no longer allowed to verbally assault and threaten the witnesses or the jury. But since the judge told him this week that he will have no choice but to jail him for contempt if he violates it one more time, he's managed to keep it together and confine his insults and threats to the judge, the prosecutors and Joe Biden. But you can feel the tension in Trump when he makes his frequent forays into the strange echo chamber hallway where he rants about the proceedings and reads clippings from Fox News personalities saying the trial is a travesty. 

One can imagine how the thought of going to jail petrifies him. This is a man who has been pampered his entire life. His elaborate morning ablutions with the hair and the make-up routine alone make any kind of imprisonment unthinkable. But he really, really wants to go after Stormy Daniels, so much so that he had his lawyers ask the judge to lift the gag order for her specifically since she is now finished testifying. (The judge said no, that he was preserving the integrity of the court.) 

For Trump this goes against every fiber of his being, as was not so coincidentally conveyed to the jury yesterday afternoon when one of his book publishers testified and was asked to read aloud some passages from his books, including this charming commentary:

"For many years I've said that if someone screws you, screw them back. If somebody hurts you you just go after them as viciously and as violently as you can. Like it says in the Bible, an eye for an eye." 

Trump will just have to let his allies in the right-wing media do that for him for the moment — and they are more than eager to comply. 

It's doubtful that Trump wanted his family to be there to hear all these sordid details in person anyway. But he reportedly was quite upset that his political allies weren't in attendance during the first two weeks of the trial.  According to NBC News , he whined "no one is defending me" and pouted over the fact that there  wasn't a big crowd of protesters outside . He lied about that, of course, and said on camera that there were hundreds of people blocked from protesting.

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He actually  called  for his followers to come to the trial on his Truth Social platform — “GO OUT AND PEACEFULLY PROTEST. RALLY BEHIND MAGA. SAVE OUR COUNTRY!” — but other than a dozen or so kooks, they haven't shown up. From the very beginning of his legal travails he's issued threats that his people "won't stand for it" saying  as far back as 2022,  “If these radical, vicious racist prosecutors do anything wrong, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protest we have ever had … in Washington, D.C, in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere because our country and our elections are corrupt." 

Why MAGA hasn't turned up to support him in his moment of need when there always seems to be a few thousand who like to go to his rallies is a mystery but it clearly has him feeling down in the dumps. So now he's got some of his employees, political cronies and right-wing media personalities attending the trial to give him a little boost. 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who Politico r eports  hangs around Trump as much as possible, was among the first to heed the call. Also showing up despite having much more important things to do were campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita along with advisor Boris Epshteyn and Natalie Harp, who t he New York Times describes this way:

Called “the human printer” by colleagues, Ms. Harp often carries a portable device so she can quickly provide Mr. Trump with hard copies of mood-boosting news articles and social media posts by people praising him.

That's just pathetic. 

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter , Crash Course.

The lawyer who has lost several cases for Trump but who defends him vociferously on TV, Alina Habba, has appeared in the courtroom. And on Thursday former judge and current Fox News member of "The Five," Jeanine Pirro was in attendance. The big name of the day, however, was Florida Senator Rick Scott who went the extra mile and held a press conference where he compared Trump to himself:

Scott's company paid $1.7 billion in fines to settle charges of rampant Medicare fraud, at the time the largest ever imposed, and Scott has previously  said , “I take responsibility for what happened on my watch as CEO.” Today he says he's a victim of the deep state. 

The ambitious senator is said to be angling for the VP slot or Senate majority leader and he knows that whining like a five-year-old about being victimized is the quickest way to Donald Trump's heart. Scott's the first contender to be there in his time of need and I'm sure Trump noticed. If the rest of them haven't figured out by now that job one is defending Dear Leader and singing his praises then they'd better just take their names off the list right now. Look for the whole crew to traipse up there over the next few weeks. Donald Trump needs cheering up and nothing makes him happier than lackeys begging for his favor. 

about this topic

• "He was bigger and blocking the way": Stormy Daniels takes the stand and reminds people who Trump is
• Trump's trial paints him as a clown — but MAGA sees a boss
• "Oh my god": Stormy Daniels lawyer texted "what have we done?" after seeing Trump win election

Heather Digby Parton, also known as " Digby ," is a contributing writer to Salon. She was the winner of the 2014 Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism.

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