The Covid-19 pandemic has developed into the most serious global health crisis since the Spanish flu in 1918-19, and the necessary protection measures have a severe impact on economic activity. In a new update of our global growth forecasts, we now project the world economy to contract sharply by -2% in 2020. This is much worse than during the financial crisis and marks even a downward revision of our March forecast by -1% point. The significant downgrade is due to the fact that we now have more information from key figures and research on the impact of the pandemic to lean to for guidance. For example the OECD has ... (full story)