The Global Economy contracted sharply with the COVID-19 pandemic, leading heavily to a recession in most countries. Governments across the world were facing a health, social and economic crisis. Markets were hitting new lows; trades were on a halt and the population was in a panic while hospitals were overwhelmed. It was up to the government and financial institutions to roll out fiscal measures to combat the pandemic and protect the people.
Elliott Harris, the UN Chief Economist, and the Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development stated that "The pace and strength of the recovery of the crisis not only hinges on the efficacy of public health measures in slowing the spread of the virus but also on the ability of countries to protect jobs and incomes, particularly of the most vulnerable members of our societies.”
Different types of fiscal policy measures taken across countries to tackle the pandemic is analysed in this notebook. Based on the types of policies taken by the best-performing countries^, policy measures will be recommended to the worst-performing countries^^.
To achieve this, data will be analysed to find the best and the worst-performing countries. This will narrow the search down to the top 10 and bottom 10 countries in terms of GDP percentage change. Analyses will majorly focus on each country's income level, policy implementation authority, and types of policy measures. This data would help recommend the type of policy measures the worst-performing countries should have taken to tackle the Great Lockdown better.
^Countries with the highest percentage change in 2020-2021 GDP as best-performing countries. ^^Countries with the worst percentage change in 2020-2021 GDP as worst-performing countries.
The analysis was done by merging two datasets:
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"COVID-19 Finance Starter EDA" hosted by Bojan Tunguz in CSV format. The dataset consists of nearly 4000 rows with data on different policy measures taken by 157 countries.
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Annual GDP for every country in the world by the World Bank in CSV format.
- How did the GDP change in countries around the world before and during the pandemic?
- All countries went into losses but who was hit the worst?
- What steps were taken by the best performing countries to improve this economic situation?
- What policy measures taken by the better-performing countries can be suggested to the worst-performing countries?
- Are there low-income countries that performed relatively well in terms of increase in GDP?
To set up this project, you will require the following tools:
Anaconda Jupyter Lab Python 3.0.0+ Please make sure that you have installed all the libraries used in this project.
Once you are done setting up the environment, You can run the Jupyter Notebook on Anaconda. Make sure to change the path of the data as per your convenience. You can also check out the presentation report or the HTML report in order to avoid running the Jupyter Notebook.