Countries have sought to stop the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) by severely restricting travel and in-person commercial activities. Here, we analyse the supply-chain effects of a set of idealized lockdown scenarios, using the latest global trade modelling framework. We find that supply-chain losses that are related to initial COVID-19 lockdowns are largely dependent on the number of countries imposing restrictions and that losses are more sensitive to the duration of a lockdown than its strictness. However, a longer containment that can eradicate the disease imposes a smaller loss than shorter ones. Earlier, stricter and shorter lockdowns can minimize overall losses. A 'go-slow' approach to lifting restrictions may reduce overall damages if it avoids the need for further lockdowns. Regardless of the strategy, the complexity of global supply chains will magnify losses beyond the direct effects of COVID-19. Thus, pandemic control is a public good that requires collective efforts and support to lower-capacity countries.

Countries around the world have sought to stop the spread of the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) by severely restricting travel and in-person commercial activities. Here, we analyse the economic footprint of such “lockdowns” using detailed datasets of global supply chains and a set of pandemic scenarios. We find that COVID-related economic losses are largely dependent on the number of countries imposing lockdowns, and that losses are more sensitive to the duration of a lockdown that its strictness—suggesting that more severe restrictions can reduce economic damages if they successfully shorten the duration of a lockdown. Our results also highlight several key vulnerabilities in global supply chains: Even countries that are not directly affected by COVID-19 can experience large losses (e.g., >20% of their GDP)—with such cascading impacts often occurring in low- and middle-income countries. Open and highly-specialized economies suffer particularly large losses (e.g., energy-exporting Central Asian countries or tourism-focused Caribbean countries). Supply bottlenecks and declines in consumer demand lead to especially large losses in globalized sectors such as electronics (production decreases of 13-53% across our scenarios) and automobiles (2-49%). Although retrospective analyses will undoubtedly provide further policy-relevant insights, our findings already imply that earlier, stricter, and thus shorter lockdowns are likely to minimize overall economic damages, and that global supply chains will magnify economic losses in some countries and industry sectors regardless of direct effects of the coronavirus.

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Economic growth is principally powered by energy fuels. While the potential energy transition pathways in developed countries are clear, they have not been well explored for developing countries. Here, we study the average annual growth rate of energy consumption in 12 aggregated regions during 2001–2017 and the driving factors behind that growth. The countries with high energy consumption growth rates were concentrated in Asia and North Africa and four of the top five regions were in Asia, while the energy consumption in developed countries was stable or even declined in that period. Therefore, based on a comprehensive consideration of factors such as population and economic development, to quantify the role of renewable energy, we analyze the long time series of energy consumption for China, India, Indonesia, Myanmar and Bangladesh since the 1970s. Despite economic development and population growth accelerating energy consumption substantially upward, energy intensity made energy consumption decrease. Coal and oil dominated the energy transition pathway in China and India, while biomass and natural gas dominated in Indonesia, Myanmar and Bangladesh. The amount of CO2 emissions in different countries was closely related to the amount and type of the energy they used. Our research results emphasize the importance of improving energy efficiency and adjusting energy structure to reduce energy consumption and achieve sustainable development.

Multi‐regional input–output (MRIO) models are widely used to analyze the economic interdependencies between regions in the context of global trade and environmental research. MRIO tables enable us to teleconnect the sectors in different regions along the supply chain and track both direct and indirect impacts of global production. Yet emerging economies—despite reshaping international trade patterns and playing an increasingly important role in the world economy—are not adequately represented in existing MRIO databases, which lack key detail on countries and sectors. To bridge this gap, our study presents EMERGING: Up‐to‐date and full‐scale MRIO tables covering 135 sectors in 245 economies over the period from 2015 to 2019. We describe in detail the steps in the development of the database and reconciliation and validation of bilateral trade data and national statistics. The EMERGING database is also designed to incorporate more official and publicly available data from national statistical institutes to ensure a high level of data quality, especially for these economies. We compare both national production‐based and consumption‐based value added generated from the EMERGING MRIO with the results from four major MRIO databases. Although global value‐added accounts are similar across databases, we find significant discrepancies at the level of individual countries and sectors concerning conflicting benchmark data.