In this paper we seek to make headway on the question of what recovery from Covid-19 recession may look like, focusing on the duration of the recovery - that is, how long it will take to re-attain the levels of output and employment reached at the prior business cycle peak. We start by categorizing all post-1960 recessions in advanced countries and emerging markets into supply-shock, demand-shock and both-shock induced recessions. We measure recovery duration as the number of years required to re-attain pre-recession levels of output or employment. We then rely on the earlier literature on business cycle dynamics to identify candidate variables that can help to account for variations in recovery duration following different kinds of shocks. By asking which of these variables are operative in the Covid-19 recession, we can then draw inferences about the duration of the recovery under different scenarios. A number of our statistical results point in the direction of lengthy recoveries.

We investigate the relationship between economic growth and lagged internationalcapital flows, disaggregated into FDI, portfolio investment, equity investment, and shorttermdebt. We follow about 100 countries during 1990-2010 when emerging marketsbecame more integrated into the international financial system. We look at therelationship both before and after the global crisis. Our study reveals a complex andmixed picture. The relationship between growth and lagged capital flows depends on thetype of flows, economic structure, and global growth patterns. We find a large and robustrelationship between FDI – both inflows and outflows – and growth. The relationshipbetween growth and equity flows is smaller and less stable. Finally, the relationshipbetween growth and short-term debt is nil before the crisis, and negative during the crisis

Developing Asia experienced a sharp surge in foreign currency reserves prior to the 2008-9 crisis.The global crisis has been associated with an unprecedented rise of swap agreements betweencentral banks of larger economies and their counterparts in smaller economies. We explorewhether such swap lines can reduce the need for reserve accumulation. The evidence suggeststhat there is only a limited scope for swaps to substitute for reserves. The selectivity of the swaplines indicates that only countries with significant trade and financial linkages can expect accessto such ad hoc arrangements, on a case by case basis. Moral hazard concerns suggest that theapplicability of these arrangements will remain limited. However, deepening swap agreementsand regional reserve pooling arrangements may weaken the precautionary motive for reserveaccumulation.