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The world is coping with a global disaster, as the new Coronavirus takes a toll on many lost lives and a severe impact on economic activity. To provide a long-run perspective, this column documents the international response to a variety of disasters since 1790. Based on a new comprehensive database on loans extended by governments and central banks, official (sovereign-to-sovereign) international lending is much larger than generally known. Official lending spikes in times of global turmoil, such as wars, financial crises or natural disasters. Indeed, in these periods, official capital flows have repeatedly surpassed total private capital flows in the past two centuries. Wars, in particular, were accompanied by large surges in the volume of official cross-border lending.

Is degrowth bad economics? To properly answer this question, it is essential to understand what economic growth really is. The term ‘growth’ is often associated with an increase in wealth, a term loosely defined, but according to the degrowth-movement, economic growth is a narrower concept only describing an increase in Gross Domestic …