Global supply constraints from the 2008 and COVID-19 crises

Abstract

The analysis of specific economic indexes suggests that the economic damage from the 2020 COVID-19 crisis (coronavirus pandemic, apparently first spread from Wuhan, China) may exceed that of the 2008 global financial crisis dating to around September 15, 2008. Thus, by comparing the first four months after these crises, the purpose of this study is to estimate the economic damage of the supply-chain disruptions (i.e., the supply constraints) in the mining and manufacturing (M&M) sectors. Employing the supply-driven input–output (IO) model for the world (35 countries in 56 sectors), the results show that the supply-chain damage from COVID-19 is 1.248%, when compared to the annual gross domestic production (GDP), in the overall sectors, 4.443% in the M&M sectors, and 0.362% in other sectors, which are approximately 1.4 times the figures from the 2008 crisis.