ECONOMIC „LONG-COVID“?
ROBERT MISIK IN CONVERSATION WITH JENS SÜDEKUM
ECONOMIC „LONG-COVID“?
In the immediate months and years of the pandemic, governments stabilised the economy through short-time working, aid measures and economic stimulus programmes, preventing a dramatic rise in unemployment, a wave of company bankruptcies and an economic slump. But will the worst come in the future? The danger certainly exists. Inflation is already rising to an unprecedented level, with which income growth has so far failed to keep pace. Ordinary people's money is becoming less valuable. Many small and medium-sized enterprises have also used up their reserves - even if there may have been overfunding here and there. Cities and municipalities have spent a lot of money and now have tighter finances. And in general, companies' investment activity has slowed down - which is understandable given the uncertain business outlook. However, all of this together could mean that there will be significantly fewer innovations in the coming years, companies will continue to invest less, new production processes will take longer to become established and fewer jobs will be created than would otherwise have been the case. How great is the risk of long-term stagnation and a sustained loss of prosperity? What else is in store for us? Is the hardest part still ahead of us?
Jens Südekum, Economist
Robert Misik, Author and journalist
Jens Südekum (born 24 August 1975 in Goslar) is a German economist. He is a university professor of international economics at the Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE) at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi). He is also a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), the CESifo Institute, the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) and the Institute for the Study of Labour (IZA). He was also Chair of the Committee for Regional Theory and Policy at the Verein für Socialpolitik (VfS) from 2016 to 2020 and editor of the Journal of Regional Science from 2015 to 2018.