Regional Macroeconomic and Trade Trends During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Focusing on regional macroeconomic and trade trends since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the early months of 2020 through the middle of 2021 when data collection efforts concluded, this paper gathers and presents a broad set of data from multiple sources. Intending to provide a near global coverage, this paper is structured around the following six major regions: Asia and Pacific (AP), Europe, North America (NA), Latin America and Caribbean (LAC), Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), and Middle East and North Africa (MENA). For each region, 10 major macroeconomic and trade indicators are provided, describing a wide range of economic outcomes. This collection of region-based analyses complements the other working paper simultaneously produced by Erika Bethmann, Chang Hong, Lin Jones, and Joann Peterson—“Challenges Facing Selected Industries and Related Global Supply Chains During the Ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic,” which provides a collection of industry-based analyses. Together, these two papers aim to provide a comprehensive set of background information and data for future work on the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.