1. Introduction: Responding to Pandemics and Economic Challenges: Policy Choices Post Covid-19

This research project was initiated at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, a time marked by significant economic and social dislocations around the world. The project considers public policy responses to the social and economic dislocations spawned by the pandemic, and identifiers opportunities for implementation of reforms that will shape the future economic policy and growth trajectory. It studies the pandemic closely and does so through a socio-economic lens that draws on history, approaches to state-market relations, and public policy perspectives. International historical experience has shown that countries and societies that have gone through tough economic times, either as a consequence of wars or economic depressions, have enacted unpopular policy measures based on difficult trade-offs, and which yielded innovation.