Economic geography II: The economic geographies of the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

This is the second of three reports on economic geography. It focuses on research that addresses issues deemed to be both urgent and generative of crisis. This report focuses on the crisis created by the emergence of COVID-19. While the virus may have been novel, many of its implications were not, as several important processes of uneven development and inequality accelerated. The paper first determines the extent to which the emergence of a pandemic virus constituted a ‘crisis’, before examining some of the most salient economic geographical impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. These include the rise of friction within the global economy resulting in significant disruption to global supply chains; the acceleration of the digital platform as an ever more dominant form of economic organisation; and how the pandemic deepened social inequalities and uneven development. The report concludes with observations about the emergence of what has been described as a post-pandemic polycrisis.