Episode description

The outbreak of the coronavirus in China is a global tragedy. While much of the attention has been on the disease itself, many global experts have been focusing on the economic side-effects. Some economists are even hinting that the effects on China’s economy could be just as disastrous in the long-term as the disease itself.

You’ve probably seen plenty of stories about how this outbreak could derail China’s economy, but why exactly is that the case and what would that look like on the ground? There’s no better person to put these questions to than Chang-Tai Hsieh, a Professor of Economics at Chicago Booth, a faculty director of the Becker Friedman Institute in China, a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Banks of San Francisco, New York, and Minneapolis, as well as the World Bank's Development Economics Group and the Economic Planning Agency in Japan, and the recipient of the Sun Ye-Fang award for research on the Chinese economy.