In this paper we seek to make headway on the question of what recovery from Covid-19 recession may look like, focusing on the duration of the recovery – that is, how long it will take to re-attain the levels of output and employment reached at the prior business cycle peak. We start by categorizing all post-1960 recessions in advanced countries and emerging markets into supply-shock, demand-shock and both-shock induced recessions. We measure recovery duration as the number of years required to re-attain pre-recession levels of output or employment. We then rely on the earlier literature on business cycle dynamics to identify candidate variables that can help to account for variations in recovery duration following different kinds of shocks. By asking which of these variables are operative in the Covid-19 recession, we can then draw inferences about the duration of the recovery under different scenarios. A number of our statistical results point in the direction of lengthy recoveries.

在本文中，我们寻求在从 Covid-19 衰退中复苏可能是什么样子的问题上取得进展，重点关注复苏的持续时间——即重新达到所达到的产出和就业水平需要多长时间在之前的商业周期高峰期。我们首先将发达国家和新兴市场 1960 年后的所有衰退分为供应冲击、需求冲击和双重冲击引发的衰退。我们将复苏持续时间衡量为重新达到衰退前的产出或就业水平所需的年数。然后，我们依靠早期关于商业周期动态的文献来确定候选变量，这些变量可以帮助解释不同类型的冲击后恢复持续时间的变化。通过询问这些变量中的哪些在 Covid-19 衰退中起作用，然后，我们可以推断出不同情景下的复苏持续时间。我们的一些统计结果指向长期复苏的方向。