Étude spéciale. Impact du choc de demande lié à la pandémie de la Covid-19 en avril 2020 sur l’activité économique mondiale

Since mid-March, many countries have enacted containment measures to encourage populations to limit their physical interactions in order to stem the health crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The crisis has resulted in a drop in demand, which then spread to the entire economy through the production system. In this study, we examine the transmission of the containment measures in force in April 2020 to the global economy by using the input-output tables from the World Input-Output Database (WIOD) published in 2016. According to our assessment, the lockdown measures and social distancing implemented at their April level led to a 19% drop in global value added. Dependence on foreign countries, through net exports (including tourism), constitutes an additional point of vulnerability in the face of a crisis of this magnitude. It is the European countries that were hit hardest by the containment measures taken in April. This means first, the countries where containment was the strictest, in particular France, Spain and Italy, but also those that have a greater external contribution to the decline in activity, even if the containment measures are less severe, with Germany being particularly affected through this channel.