Across the world, GDP is a key measure of how much countries are able to produce. Each country has its own population, politics and trade agreements that all contribute to how well their economy and GDP performs, especially as they work to reduce corruption and take advantage of natural resources and new technology.
The Global Growth Tracker compiles data on economic growth from around a hundred countries that regularly report quarterly GDP statistics to the IMF. GDP is a measure of the total value of finished goods and services produced in each country, measured in current dollars. Countries with higher GDP tend to have more advanced economies, but it is not always the case that the top countries are the fastest growing.
GDP growth slowed following the 2008 financial crisis, and three-fourths of tracker countries saw their GDP contracts in 2009. Global growth recovered in 2021, but accelerated declines in external demand and rising trade barriers weighed on growth in the second half of the year. In 2022 and 2023, growth recovered again, but still remained below pre-pandemic levels in many countries.
Our model decomposes the trajectory of GDP growth in the first half of 2020 into contributions from the explanatory variables (deaths and OSI). The coefficient on deaths is negative, but it is only modestly statistically significant. On the other hand, the contribution of OSI was quite large and highly statistically significant.