Countermeasures against economic crisis from COVID-19 pandemic in China: An analysis of effectiveness and trade-offs

Abstract

The effectiveness of different countermeasures to economic crisis from the public health emergency is still inadequately understood. We establish an illustrative scenario, specifying the shocks of COVID-19 pandemic and countermeasures applying a general equilibrium model to analyze the effectiveness of countermeasures with a particular focus on trade-offs in the impacts of monetary and fiscal policies. We find that both monetary and fiscal countermeasures could effectively mitigate the economic damages to GDP and employment. However, they would also produce adverse side-effects such as an increase in consumer price by 1.05% and 0.57%, respectively, and a decline in exports by 2.61% and 1.05%, respectively. Monetary policies would exacerbate the damages to external demand by supply-side shocks of the pandemic, but they are more suitable for mitigating demand-side shocks. While fiscal policies would benefit nearly all producing sectors, monetary policies would mainly affect export-oriented manufacturing sectors negatively.