IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON ASIAN ECONOMIES AND POLICY RESPONSES

On March 12th 2020, World Health Organization (WHO) declared the spreading of the new virus, 2019-nCoV, a pandemic. In Asia, the virus, more commonly referred to as COVID-19, has been spreading since the end of December. To contain the public health threat, almost all countries enforced a variety of measures, including lockdowns, to minimize face-to-face human interactions between the infected and the susceptible.

While these vigilant measures save lives, they also generate a substantial negative economic shock that immediately halts demand and significantly disrupts supply, global production value chain and trade. The consequences are dire - considerable decline in output, massive surge in unemployment, countless bankruptcy cases, and unrelentless worries over financial stability. The result, a worldwide economic setback, is more severe than that experienced during the Great Financial Crisis of 2008-2009.

Asia's experiences with COVID-19 precede that in the West. This fortuitous timing allows Asia to share its learnings drawn from experiences to benefit the world.

The Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research's (ABFER) community has gathered a collection of insights to inform the public. Besides providing access to research on the pandemic conducted in Asia, these commentaries offer comprehensive information on the effects of the pandemic, the effectiveness of measures employed to contain it and the subsequent economic impacts from such implementation. With granular analyses of government policies and their associated economic rescue packages, these commentaries elucidate the hard trade-offs between public health protection and economic security. Finally, the commentaries address the broader impact of the pandemic on international trade, global value chains and society.

Sumit Agarwal is the Low Tuck Kwong Professor at the School of Business and Professor in the departments of Economics, Finance and Real Estate at the National University of Singapore. Previously, he held positions as a Professor of Finance at Georgetown University, senior financial economist in the research department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and a senior vice president and credit risk management executive in the Small Business Risk Solutions Group of Bank of America.

Dr Agarwal's research interests include issues relating to financial institutions, household finance, behavioral finance, international finance, real estate markets, urban economics and capital markets. He has published over eighty research articles as well as being is the co-editor of Real Estate Economics and an association editor at Management Science and Journal of Financial Services Research. He writes regular op-ed's in the Straits Times and Forbes and is featured on various media outlets like the BBC on issues relating to finance, banking, and real estate markets. Sumit's research is widely cited in leading newspapers and magazines.

Professor Zhiguo He, Fuji Bank and Heller Professor of Finance, University of Chicago, Booth School of Business; Finance PhD program area advisor, University of Chicago, Booth School of Business; Faculty co-director of the Fama-Miller Center, University of Chicago, Booth School of Business; Research associate at NBER; Special-term Alibaba Foundation Professor, Tsinghua University, School of Economics and Management; Member of the academy committee, Luohan Academy.

Professor He is interested in the implications of agency frictions and debt maturities in financial markets and macroeconomics with a special focus on contract theory and banking. His recent research focuses on the role of financial institutions in the 2007/08 global financial crisis. He is also actively conducting academic research on Chinese financial markets that have been undergoing rapid development, including the stock market, local government debt, shadow banking, and interbank markets together with recent regulation changes; in relation to this research, he teaches a newly created elective MBA course, "Chinese Economy and Financial Markets." Besides research in Chinese financial markets, he has also been writing academic articles on new progress in the area of cryptocurrency and blockchains.

Professor Bernard Yeung is Stephen Riady Distinguished Professor in Finance and Strategic Management at the National University of Singapore Business School. He is also the President of the Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research. He was Dean of NUS Business School from June 2008 to May 2019. Before joining NUS, he was the Abraham Krasnoff Professor in Global Business, Economics, and Management at New York University (NYU) Stern School of Business and the Director of the NYU China House. From 1988 to 1999, he taught at the University of Michigan and at the University of Alberta from 1983 to 1988.

Professor Yeung has published widely in top tier academic journals covering topics in Finance, Economics, and Strategy; his writing also appears in important media publications such as the People's Daily, The Financial Times, The Economist, and The Wall Street Journal.