Economic recovery, like Covid-19 vaccines, will not be evenly distributed around the world over the coming two years. Despite enormous policy support provided by governments and central banks, the economic risks remain profound, and not just to frontier economies facing imminent debt problems and low-income countries experiencing an alarming rise in poverty. With the coronavirus far from tamed, populism rife, global debt at record levels, and policy normalisation likely to be uneven, the situation remains precarious.

This is not to deny the overall good news of the last 12 months. Effe...