Insights on the Economic Impacts of COVID-19 from the East Asian Perspective

Webinar co-hosted by Asia Pacific Center and Center for Korean Studies, UCLA International Institute

There have been more than 7.5 million people infected with the coronavirus worldwide with nearly half a million deaths to date. The pandemic has also taken a tremendous economic toll at the global, national, and local levels with unprecedented speed and severity. As the world is combating COVID-19 and sending billions of people into lockdown, countries in East Asia — China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan — seem to have done better in effectively flattening the curves of the pandemic and economic downturn than countries in the West. How so? What different approaches and strategies have East Asian nations adopted to fight the pandemic? Although no country in the world can be held up as a model for both public health and economic responses to the pandemic, there may be important insights and lessons learned from the East Asian experience. This webinar features two distinguished scholars of economics — Professor Biung-Ghi JU of Seoul National University, South Korea, and Professor Chu-Chia LIN of National Chengchi University, Taiwan. The scholars will offer their analyses of the economic impacts of COVID-19 on East Asia and share their insights about the regional-specific advantages and challenges for tackling the pandemic’s devastating impacts on the economy.

Biung-Ghi Ju is a professor in the Department of Economics at Seoul National University. He is the director of the Center for Distributive Justice in the Institute of Economic Research at Seoul National University. Before joining SNU, he took faculty positions in Korea University and University of Kansas. He earned his Ph.D. in Economics from University of Rochester, NY, USA, in 2001. His research and teaching interests are in Social Choice and Voting, Theory of Fair Allocation, Distributive Justice, and Mechanism Design. He served as editor of Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (Mohr Siebeck) and president of the Korean Association of Applied Economics.

Chu-Chia Steve Lin is a full professor at the Department of Economics, National Chengchi University since 1988. Professor Lin served as the chairperson at the Department of Economics, NCCU, from 1992 to 1995 and he also served as the president of the Chinese Society of Housing Study from 1999 to 2002. Professor Lin’s major fields of research are cross-strait economic relationships and housing economics, and he has published numerous books on economic relations across the Taiwan Strait and numerous papers in prestigious international journals. Professor Lin was appointed as a Deputy Minister of the Mainland Affairs Council of Taiwan from October 2012 to January 2016. He was in charge of economic relations across the Taiwan Strait, including the Trade in Service Agreement, Trade in Goods Agreement, and the Agreement of Dispute Settlement across the Taiwan Strait. Professor Lin was appointed again as Minister, National Development Council, from February 2016 till May 2016. Professor Lin now teaches at Department of Economics, NCCU.

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Duration: 46:45