Collins: If the U.S. economy gets sick, other countries could catch ‘pneumonia’

August 4, 2020

A segment on Marketplace on NPR, stated that the U.S. economy contributes more than half of the world’s stock market capitalization, accounts for over 15% of global GDP and is a crucial import market. U-M Provost and Ford School economics professor Susan Collins told the program that, "There is the old adage that when the U.S. sneezes, the global economy has a cold, and I would add that some countries get pneumonia. So the impact is certainly widely differentiated for a variety of different reasons."

She said that leaders of other large economies should be worried, "for many reasons: It's true that the U.S. economy is not as large a share of the global economy as it was some decades ago, and it's not the only engine of global growth. At the same time, this pandemic, of course, has impacted all countries all over the world. And so all of them are reeling, which means it’s not obvious that there is another engine of growth that’s going to come in and take over."

You can hear the interview here.