Covid, conflict and China

For the countries of Europe, the conflict poses existential questions

Predictive conclusions on the economic impact of the Russia-Ukraine conflict run a high error risk. A “sudden stop” to the conflict, through ceasefire or other means, would negate any assumption that present volatile trends would impact the future economic course of the world. Further, and where a lot of extant predictive analysis is getting it wrong, there is an attribution problem as to whether a particular negative economic effect is due to the pandemic or to the conflict.

Take oil prices; they started rising on April 28, 2020, and were 400 per cent higher by the end of October 2021. The