Search results

Purpose: Pandemics lead to a sudden decline in the level of economic activities. Lending institutions reduce credit supply to businesses due to fears of rising bad debts during a pandemic. This chapter highlights some approach to financial regulation and bank supervision during a pandemic such as the SARS and COVID-19 pandemic.

Methodology: This chapter uses discourse analysis based on the literature on banking regulation and supervision.

Findings: The author shows that financial regulation during a pandemic can be enhanced by diversifying the financial system, maintaining adequate liquidity in the financial system, stimulating financial institutions to provide more credit, delaying the recognition of significant increase in credit risk, lowering the reference interest rate to encourage more lending, and providing stimulus packages to financial institutions in the economy. The author also suggest measures to improve bank supervision during a pandemic which include adopting a flexible supervisory framework, modifying bank supervisory examinations, using ad hoc stress tests, releasing the countercyclical capital buffer to banks, and increase the use of regulatory forbearance.

Implications: The implication of these approaches to coping with a pandemic is that these measures can help to ensure the survival of small and large businesses and financial institutions. It can also help to preserve jobs and help to reduce the long-term damage to the economy caused by the pandemic.

Originality: Prior studies have not examined the effect of COVID-19 pandemic on bank supervision and financial regulation.

The COVID-19 pandemic, and the measures implemented to control it, collided with another public health emergency – the opioid crisis – with dire consequences. In October of 2017, the Secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency. That declaration has been renewed several times, including during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the latest renewal set to go into effect on July 4, 2022. The overlap of individual, environmental, and social risk factors for substance use disorder (SUD) and COVID-19 present major challenges to those working as part of the response to both pandemics. The severity of the implications of this dual pandemic – an estimated 100,000 people in the United States died from a drug overdose during the first year of the pandemic – make this an area of the pandemic response where lessons learned had to be rapidly implemented to save lives. Identifying ways in which those lessons can be expanded to other populations at risk, including those with other pre-existing mental disorders, will be important to reducing the inequitable impacts of the pandemic on mental health.

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated many organisations’ reliance on the Internet, with schools, companies, and government agencies, among other institutions, all shifting their operations online in a relatively short period of time. This sudden shift created opportunities for cybercriminals, as did the burden on the healthcare sector, the rush for unemployment benefits, and the desire for up-to-date information about outbreaks and health precautions. This chapter examines the trends in cybercrime during the COVID-19 pandemic that were spurred by these changes, as well as the mitigation measures implemented by government and private industry stakeholders to help protect critical infrastructure and online operations. It argues that the nature of cybercrime and the most common forms of criminal activity did not change substantially during the pandemic, but rather that criminals’ focus on whom to target and how to exploit evolving current events enabled them to wield existing criminal tools to greater effect, and potentially also at greater scale, though reliable statistics on the frequency and size of cybercrimes are scarce. Finally, the chapter considers how these trends in cybercrime forced private organisations and governments to undertake new cybersecurity measures and programs and whether the long-term effects of the pandemic might actually include stronger cybersecurity if these efforts continue past the end of the public health crisis.

The COVID-19 pandemic is indeed a once-in-a-lifetime emergency. While it seems that the end is nigh, there is also a renewed talk of the looming fourth wave spurred by the mutated Delta, Delta+, and other variants. The pandemic has made several fault lines visible in almost all societies. These include but are not limited to the tentativeness of our knowledge (especially science), the precariousness of our health systems, and failings of the educational systems, particularly citizenship education. While the COVID-19 pandemic will be long remembered as the health crisis of our times; we contend that the pandemic is also an educational crisis. Results of neoliberal neglect of citizenship-related education are now apparent in form of unethical, unjust, racist, and socially irresponsible attitudes and behaviors of individuals, collectives, and states. At the individual level, these are obvious in the irresponsible behaviors that endanger the lives of fellow citizens. At the community level, the failure of citizenship education is evident in vaccination inequality both within and between societies. Finally, at the level of international community, one can see vaccination nationalism, and politically and economically motivated vaccination diplomacy as markers of unethical citizenship.

The purpose of this review is to summarize existing literature on the causes and impacts of the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic on people and businesses, and to propose a conceptual framework for the global economic recovery. The study used existing most recent empirical literature from available for exploring of the magnitude causes and effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the people and business and summarized the way of the world economic system. The review study uncovered that people and businesses are suffering from vulnerability scenarios that have causes and effects on current macroeconomic and microeconomic indicators. In addition, microeconomic indicators have affected in the categories of unemployed who are soaring, lowering incomes, increasing health spending, household spending, low productivity, mental stress, decreased consumption, social imbalance, collapsing commodity prices and so on. Nevertheless, macroeconomic indicators have affected in the categories of the global financial crisis, supply and demand, capital market volatility, disruption of fiscal policy, monetary policy, aviation industry, international tourism and hospitality, world trade, and high unemployment. The present study concluded that all government and non-government agencies have to play a major and mature role not only in developing of right policies and laws but also in ensuring practices and coordination as well as increase public and business awareness accordingly. The study summarized strategic and policy guideline for the recovery of the global economy by strengthening the health care system, commodity market volatility fix-up, financial market restructuring, resumption of manufacturing and economic activity, special care for micro-, small- and medium-scale enterprises, mitigate the unemployment problem, recovery package for tourism, hospitality and aviation sector, strengthening the global supply chain network, impacts on global immigration and remittance issues and develop sustainable development framework accordingly for recovery of the world economy.

Starting in March 2020, Indonesia had the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, this situation has decreased the utilization of highways due to complying with the government regulation, including work from home and large-scale social restrictions to reduce the spreading the corona virus. There are three highway companies listed on Indonesia Stock Exchange such as CMNP, META, and JSMR. On the other hand, the research about the financial performance and the financial distress prediction in Highways sector, especially in Indonesia is not available during the COVID-19 pandemic. This research is aimed to evaluate the financial distress by the Zmijewski model with two criterions: bankrupt and non-bankrupt zone and the financial performance by state-owned enterprise (SOE) rating with three criterions: healthy, less healthy, and unhealthy condition. The period of research is Q1 2019 – Q1 2020 as the period before the COVID-19 pandemic and Q2 2020 – Q2 2021 as the period during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study concludes that all highway companies was in non-bankrupt zone by the Zmijewski model for both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, based on SOE rating on average for the period before the COVID-19 pandemic, CMNP, META, and JSMR achieved rating consecutively BBB, BBB, and BB. Meanwhile, on average, for the period during the COVID-19 pandemic, CMNP, META, and JSMR achieved ratings consecutively BB, BB, and B.

COVID-19 has influenced the way we utilise the radio spectrum in terms of increasing data rates, the localisation of usage, and the transfer of traffic from urban to rural areas. Most regulators have shown sympathy towards operator requirements, stipulating a range of mitigation actions including allowing technology neutrality and temporary assignments. Internationally, the ITU-R suspended all physical meetings and launched a new global network resiliency platform named ‘REG4COVID’ to share experiences including those related to spectrum management.

It is argued in this chapter that the pandemic has supported the calls for additional unlicensed spectrum for Wi-Fi in the 6 GHz and accelerated the rollout of 5G. Moreover, despite of increasing use of streaming, it is quite difficult to assume that traditional linear TV will be replaced, at least in the near future for a variety of reasons. The pandemic has also raised the question as to whether an innovative assignment model could be used to assign the spectrum instead of auctions, and whether, in some countries where temporary assignments were made, frequencies are kept unutilised or reserved. Concerning international spectrum management, it is expected that WRC-23 will be held on time though there will be some implications for issues such as the regulatory time-limits for bringing into use satellite networks frequency assignments. Finally, it is argued that the pandemic has also demonstrated the importance of flexibility and agility in national spectrum management, and placed spectrum managers in a new position where they were forced to be proactive instead of their traditional reactive role.

Besides the widespread harm and dreadful impact COVID-19 has caused, it brought about change. Interpreting the pandemic as a ‘change agent’, it is possible to observe how it accelerated the use of digital technologies, facilitating the migration of many activities to the virtual sphere and thus changing the interaction between the physical and virtual worlds. Although the pandemic accelerated the diffusion and adoption of digital technologies, allowing many to avoid or reduce the harms caused by the pandemic, not everyone benefitted to the same extent. The pandemic exacerbated existing digital divides while creating new ones, simultaneously elevating important policy debates regarding digital infrastructure and inclusion policies.

Over the period 2020–2021, Latvian schools experienced one of the longest closure periods in Europe. Hence, Covid-19 significantly impacted high school pupils, especially those graduating in 2021, that is, half of the secondary school program they acquired was delivered remotely. Their learning and social experiences are distinct from that of previous cohorts. The findings are directly relevant for higher education institutions (HEIs) to further adapt to the background and needs of this student cohort. To examine this cohort's experience, this chapter empirically examines adolescents at the point of their graduation from high school to learn what impact the pandemic has had on their quality education and plans. The findings provide insight into how they evaluate the remote studies and their knowledge, how they perceive their mental state, and what disruption to plans it has caused. The authors learn that most students found remote studies more difficult than onsite learning and associate it with lack of knowledge behind the grades earned. They have experienced lack of motivation and miss real-life communication with their friends, even though they occasionally admit not breaking lockdown rules and meeting peers. The most common concern among graduates is lost opportunities they would otherwise have, however, the authors also notice impressive resilience when they imply that the pandemic has opened new opportunities that otherwise would not be possible, along with self-development and character growth. Overall, the stress level for adolescents was moderate to high. Covid-19 has caused disruptions to plans, some more like opportunities others like limitations. The insights may provide understanding to how these students require a very different approach from educators and staff alike. HEIs have the opportunity to adapt and innovate and to custom the content of studies and communication form to the diverse incoming generations.

Experts believe that the COVID-19 pandemic has had a far greater impact on the world than the Great Depression and World War II. While people were seen battling for their life on one side, there were also those who were battling for everyday necessities due to lack of income. Businesses are rethinking strategies and rewriting business plans as the game rules seem to have changed overnight with the entry of the virus. The objective of this chapter is to review the disturbing effect the pandemic has had on the Indian and world economy and further discuss the strategies that would help businesses in the short as well as long run to overcome the challenges posed by the pandemic. Literature review has been carried out to gather the data for this study. This is a narrative review and not a systematic one. A few strategies that have helped organizations to win over the COVID situation are digital transformation, reworking cost structures and implementing agile operations. Utilizing remote workforce, opting for digital transactions and providing services online have become the new normal. The researcher concludes that businesses need to accept the challenge before them and adapt people-centric strategies which rely on key technologies that are resilient and work hand-in-hand with government agencies to help reconstruct the local community that they are a part of. This collaboration will prove to be beneficial in the long run for both the organization as well as the community.