The Great Lockdown

A collection of insider accounts describing the organizational impact of COVID-19 In The Great Lockdown: Lessons Learned During the Pandemic from Organizations Around the Globe, expert strategists Shivaji Das, Aroop Zutshi , and Janesh Janardhanan deliver an insightful exploration of this once-in-a-lifetime event to unearth invaluable learnings for the future. Told through the experiences of CXOs at billion-dollar companies, star start-ups, and non-profits from around the world, the book chronicles the ups and downs of sophisticated organizations as they navigated the COVID-19 crisis through initiatives impacting people, processes, and technology. Revealing case studies contributed by the CXOs of companies spanning multiple geographies - from the USA to Iran, Uganda to Hong Kong, and multiple sectors – social media, technology, aviation, luxury retail, healthcare, etc. Incisive analyses of the techniques and strategies that worked—or didn’t—for organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic, covering the role and evolution of leadership, organizational culture, innovation and digitization Practical guidance for business leaders to apply to their own firms in times of great economic upheaval: the next pandemic, climate disasters, cyber-attacks The leaders contributing their organization's survival and revival stories include those from Julius Baer, SAP, Terumo, IndiGrid, Tapsi, Fonterra, Hornet Networks, Globalization Partners, beCuriou, GoGoX, Abacus Pharma, Real Wear Inc, SOS Children's Villages, Bangalore International Airport, and A Lange & Sohne. Perfect for executives, managers, and other business leaders, The Great Lockdown is an invaluable addition to the libraries of anyone interested in case studies of corporate resilience and endurance in the face of unprecedented economic challenges.

It is being said that we should all be proud of the way we are confronting the Covid-19 pandemic. Rather than privileging profits and trade, Western societies have made the noble decision to save lives at all costs. Indeed, the logic that has prevailed is that accepting any trade-off between saving lives and saving the economy is an unacceptable and monstrous idea, which is why liberal democracies worldwide have chosen to shutter businesses and force people to self-quarantine in their homes as much and for as long as possible. A vast majority of citizens and political leaders deemed that acting otherwise would have been nothing else but pure moral bankruptcy. Is it, however, possible that Western societies have gone the wrong way by embracing this inherently basic and impoverished version of life? The reason why a significant majority of us are unable to see this truth is because of our refusal to accept death and the tragic essence of human life which is the result of the various cultural parameters we have grown accustomed to over the past decades that followed WWII. The Covid-19 pandemic has simply been the triggering factor that has allowed these factors to reinforce the full strength they wield on our understanding of life. Defined primarily by a fear of death, the desire to prolong life as much as possible and minimize the hurdles individuals have to face during their existence has created a beast that is, in appearance, reassuring to the fearful creatures we have become. This beast has asepticized societies that refute the tragic nature of life and are willing to hinder individuals' freedom and what makes our existence inherently humane. However, without realizing it, this Leviathan that now takes the form of a nanny state has altered our nature from individuals able and encouraged to enjoy life to people whose only destiny is to simply survive for as long as possible, without any other purpose than to avoid anything that might jeopardize this objective.

A collection of insider accounts describing the organizational impact of COVID-19 In The Great Lockdown: Lessons Learned During the Pandemic from Organizations Around the Globe, expert strategists Shivaji Das, Aroop Zutshi , and Janesh Janardhanan deliver an insightful exploration of this once-in-a-lifetime event to unearth invaluable learnings for the future. Told through the experiences of CXOs at billion-dollar companies, star start-ups, and non-profits from around the world, the book chronicles the ups and downs of sophisticated organizations as they navigated the COVID-19 crisis through initiatives impacting people, processes, and technology. Revealing case studies contributed by the CXOs of companies spanning multiple geographies - from the USA to Iran, Uganda to Hong Kong, and multiple sectors – social media, technology, aviation, luxury retail, healthcare, etc. Incisive analyses of the techniques and strategies that worked—or didn’t—for organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic, covering the role and evolution of leadership, organizational culture, innovation and digitization Practical guidance for business leaders to apply to their own firms in times of great economic upheaval: the next pandemic, climate disasters, cyber-attacks The leaders contributing their organization's survival and revival stories include those from Julius Baer, SAP, Terumo, IndiGrid, Tapsi, Fonterra, Hornet Networks, Globalization Partners, beCuriou, GoGoX, Abacus Pharma, Real Wear Inc, SOS Children's Villages, Bangalore International Airport, and A Lange & Sohne. Perfect for executives, managers, and other business leaders, The Great Lockdown is an invaluable addition to the libraries of anyone interested in case studies of corporate resilience and endurance in the face of unprecedented economic challenges.

This book captures the dynamic relationship between COVID-19 pandemic, crude oil prices and major stock indices as well as the crude oil prices and stock market volatility that have been caused due to outbreak of this pandemic. The pandemic has changed the world melodramatically and major world markets collapsed in the beginning, affecting major industries in an unprecedented way. The book will be useful to the researcher in the field of finance and economics, and policy makers both at government and private level, keeping in view the present state of economy throughout the world.

Voluntary and government-mandated lockdowns in response to COVID-19 have caused causing drastic reductions in economic activity around the world. We present a parsimonious two-country-SIR model with some degree of substitutability between home and foreign goods, and show that trading partners’ asynchronous entries into the global pandemic induce mutual welfare gains from trade. Those gains are realized through exchange rate adjustments that cause a temporary reallocation of production towards the economy with the lowest infection rate at any point in time. We show that international cooperation over containment policies that aim at optimizing global welfare further enhances the ability of countries to exploit trade opportunities to contain the spread of the pandemic. We characterize the Nash game of strategic choices of containment policies as a prisoners’ dilemma.

The COVID-19 pandemic is inflicting high and rising human costs worldwide, and the necessary protection measures are severely impacting economic activity. As a result of the pandemic, the global economy is projected to contract sharply by –3 percent in 2020, much worse than during the 2008–09 financial crisis. In a baseline scenario--which assumes that the pandemic fades in the second half of 2020 and containment efforts can be gradually unwound--the global economy is projected to grow by 5.8 percent in 2021 as economic activity normalizes, helped by policy support. The risks for even more severe outcomes, however, are substantial. Effective policies are essential to forestall the possibility of worse outcomes, and the necessary measures to reduce contagion and protect lives are an important investment in long-term human and economic health. Because the economic fallout is acute in specific sectors, policymakers will need to implement substantial targeted fiscal, monetary, and financial market measures to support affected households and businesses domestically. And internationally, strong multilateral cooperation is essential to overcome the effects of the pandemic, including to help financially constrained countries facing twin health and funding shocks, and for channeling aid to countries with weak health care systems.

The COVID-19 pandemic is inflicting high and rising human costs worldwide, and the necessary protection measures are severely impacting economic activity. As a result of the pandemic, the global economy is projected to contract sharply by -3 percent in 2020, much worse than during the 2008-09 financial crisis. In a baseline scenario--which assumes that the pandemic fades in the second half of 2020 and containment efforts can be gradually unwound--the global economy is projected to grow by 5.8 percent in 2021 as economic activity normalizes, helped by policy support. The risks for even more severe outcomes, however, are substantial. Effective policies are essential to forestall the possibility of worse outcomes, and the necessary measures to reduce contagion and protect lives are an important investment in long-term human and economic health. Because the economic fallout is acute in specific sectors, policymakers will need to implement substantial targeted fiscal, monetary, and financial market measures to support affected households and businesses domestically. And internationally, strong multilateral cooperation is essential to overcome the effects of the pandemic, including to help financially constrained countries facing twin health and funding shocks, and for channeling aid to countries with weak health care systems.

A comparison of the Great Lockdown of 2020 underway with the Great Recession of 2009, reveals some regularities, yet many differences. Notably, the shock associated with the Great Recession arose out of economy-wide stress, particularly high-income countries, while in direct contrast, the Great Lockdown was borne outside of the global economic system, and seemingly is set to leave most countries severely affected, high and low-income countries alike. Both crises, however, have led to similar impacts to economies throughout the world, with significant contractions to economic growth, economic activity and employment. For global food and agriculture, the Great Recession unfolded as a combination of two distinct crises that followed each other from 2007 to 2009. The initial 2007-2008 crisis was largely limited to food and agriculture, arising from a combination of supply and demand shocks within the global food sector. The 2009 crisis arose from an external demand side shock, brought about by the sharp contraction in overall economic activity in 2009, which is now known as the Great Recession. When referring to the Great Recession, this paper distinguishes two distinct sub-crises, i.e. the global food crisis of 2007-2008 and the global recession of 2009.