The economics of the COVID-19 pandemic: an assessment

The COVID-19 pandemic has created both a medical crisis and an economic crisis. As others have noted, we face challenges just as big as those in the Spanish Flu Pandemic and the Great Depression-all at once. The tasks facing policy-makers are extraordinary. Many new kinds of intervention are urgently required. This issue of the <i>Oxford Review of Economic Policy</i> has two objectives. The first is to explore these new interventions: evaluating their use, suggesting how they might be improved, and proposing alternatives. The second is to show that the challenges facing us are global and will require international cooperation if they are to be dealt with effectively. This short introductory essay positions the papers in the issue within an overall conceptual framework, with the aim of telling an overarching story about the pandemic.