As COVID-19 erupts with unprecedented speed and scale and immediate health concerns hold centre stage, concern grows about economic fallout threatening millions of livelihoods.

This crisis will be different

The coming economic crisis will be very different from any that has come before.

One reason is the nature of the trigger – impacting both production and consumption, disproportionately affecting activities involving physical human contact and generating real fear.

But the coming months will also highlight ways in which underlying changes since the crisis of 2008/9 have created new areas of risk, both for individual businesses and for the economy as a whole.