“Vaccines are in sight. How should the world cope with two related challenges which are both national and global. The first relates to intellectual ownership rights on patents and related royalties. The second to local distribution (free or not) and access priorities. Would it make sense to envisage setting up a world foundation, private-public partnership, linked or not to the WHO, to which could be entrusted all the rights to present and future COVID vaccines and which would allocate funding for research to private companies?”

„Recent estimates (ILO, OECD) show that the share of capital remuneration in GDP steadily grows worldwide, even if levels differ from country to country. With robotisation and increased use of AI, capital intensity of world economy grows while the share of labour remuneration tends to decrease. Are these trends sustainable, especially in times of pandemic urgency?“

“Should the present crisis be used by policy makers as an opportunity to leverage and accelerate the sustainability and climate change agenda even if it could imply a kind of national “industrial policy” with its potentially distorting effects on national and international market game? If yes, how governments should strike the balance between the aspiration of “back to normal” and the needs of accelerating structural adjustment for climate changes?”

“It seems we’re confronted with a deepening paradox. While stock markets hit records, the economy is lagging. Is it not the appropriate moment to turn stock markets into engines for growth? But how to achieve this?“

„While trade tensions grow, WTO predicts a sharp fall in world trade for 2020 and 2021, with strong impacts on developing countries. For decades there used to be an intellectual and political consensus that free-trade contributes to growth and development of all involved. This consensus seems to belong to the past. What kind of international trade, and trade governance, does the world need?“

„Staggering amounts of money start pouring on Western economies in order to keep the economic machine working and to avoid massive social shocks and unrests. How will this effort be financed? First step is clear: public bodies will issue debt and borrow on the markets, while central banks will pump liquidity to make the deals easier. The second step is less clear: what should the governments do to allocate these massive amounts: give away by distributing to the affected households or enterprises (helicopter money); lend them and ultimately either enforce the service and reimbursement conditions or cancel the debt; or should they provide equity to enterprises as would do an equity (sovereign?) fund, and expect future dividends – and for the big enterprises the stock price hikes – to cover, in due time, the incurred expenses?“

Thanks for those of our contributors who ventured to react to the this question posed in this Discussion Board.