Deeper in 2020, slower in 2021
Güven Sak, PhD
28 June 2020
“The crisis like no other will have a recovery like no other,” IMF chief economist Gita Gopinath said this week. I couldn’t agree more. We have never had a sudden stop in global economic activity like this one. It is only natural that we do not yet have a real idea of how to get out of this mess. For an economist, this is a real-world experiment of planetary scale.
[More]
Throw out the old policy menu
Güven Sak, PhD
21 June 2020
Telecommuting is one of the great novelties of our lives in this age of COVID-19. It isn’t that the technology is new of course, but the manner in which we use it definitely is. You can be at a meeting in Riyadh in the morning, participate in a debate in Berlin in the early afternoon, and be in a workshop in Washington, D.C before dinner, all the while staying at home in Ankara. No jet lags, no overnight stays, no hassle at crowded airports. You can participate in the global debate – at times more than it is necessary, as we now have more free time than usual.
[More]
Ready for the second round?
Güven Sak, PhD
14 June 2020
We are all getting ready for the second round of the fight between the virus and humanity. The first round was all about “flattening the curve,” meaning that we had to limit contagion through severe physical distancing measures, lockdowns and curfews. The virus has equalized all economies in this first stage, if I may say so. It didn’t matter how rich or poor your country was, your population was vulnerable just the same, and you had to shut down your economy just the same. As Jerome H. Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, put it so elegantly, “It’s the virus, not the usual suspects” that led to the sudden stop in global economic activity.
[More]
The virus and the unicorn
Güven Sak, PhD
07 June 2020
It was my new year’s wish in 2019 to see the first Turkish unicorn that year, but I was disappointed. These mythical creatures are startup companies with a value of over $1 billion. There was a long list of them created by the venture capital industry all around the world, hailing from developing and developed countries, and yet none had come from Turkey. Finally, last week, Zynga acquired the Istanbul-based Peak Games for $1.8 billion. It was none other than the coronavirus that brought the first unicorn to Turkey.
[More]
