In this article, we take a global perspective to assess the impact of the exogenous COVID pandemic shock on business confidence. Through a quantitative analysis of 31 advanced and 12 emerging economies over the period from January 2018 to December 2020, we provide a novel investigation of a unique worldwide event, in contrast to the most frequent exogenous shocks, which typically have a more limited local or regional scope. We proxy business expectations with the business confidence indicator or BCI. First, we find that the containment measures for the COVID pandemic have negatively affected business confidence, with the compulsory policies having a greater negative effect on BCI than the voluntary ones. Second, we find positive spillover effects on the local BCIs from the containment measures implemented in neighboring countries. This suggests that business people are not against compulsory measures per se, but rather that they are less inclined to assume the costs of these. Third, we find that while the severity of containment measures has been greater in emerging countries, the negative impact on BCI of these containment measures has been larger in advanced economies.

This study documents the COVID-19 disease-control measures enacted in rural China and examines the economic and social impacts of these measures. We conducted two rounds of surveys with 726 randomly selected village informants across seven provinces. Strict disease-control measures have been universally enforced and appear to have been successful in limiting disease transmission in rural communities. The infection rate in our sample was 0.001 per cent, a rate that is near the national average outside of Hubei province. None of the villages reported any COVID-19-related deaths. For a full month during the quarantine, the rate of employment of rural workers was essentially zero. Even after the quarantine measures were lifted, nearly 70 per cent of the villagers still were unable to work owing to workplace closures. Although action has been taken to mitigate the potential negative effects, these disease-control measures might have accelerated the inequality between rural and urban households in China.