BEIRUT – Middle Eastern and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) economies are heading toward a recession in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, collapsing oil prices, and the unfolding global financial crisis.

NEW HAVEN – In an effort to get a handle on the economic and financial consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, the first instinct is to search for precedents and remedies in earlier crises. Many have pointed to the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC) as the most relevant example, especially in the aftermath of the extraordinary monetary-policy actions announced by the US Federal Reserve on March 15. That would be an unfortunate mistake.

NEW HAVEN – The world economy has clearly caught a cold. The outbreak of COVID-19 came at a particularly vulnerable point in the global business cycle. World output expanded by just 2.9 percent in 2019—the slowest pace since the 2008-09 global financial crisis and just 0.4 percentage points above the 2.5 percent threshold typically associated with global recession.

NEW HAVEN – With the benefit of full-year data, only now are we becoming aware of the danger the global economy narrowly avoided in 2019. According to the International Monetary Fund’s latest estimates, world GDP grew by just 2.9 percent last year—the weakest performance since the outright contraction in the depths of the global financial crisis in 2009 and far short of the 3.8 percent pace of post-crisis recovery over the 2010-18 period.