Introduction - Latin America in the post-COVID-19 era

This special edition of "Ecos de Economía" is dedicated to economic studies of the COVID-19 pandemic in Latin America. The pandemic has had a deep economic and social impact on the region, and its long-term consequences are yet to be fully assessed. CEPAL, for instance, deemed that the crisis associated with COVID-19 is the worst that the region has faced. In this special issue, we present five articles that underwent a rigorous selection process led by the editors, with the invaluable contribution of a group of expert reviewers on the different topics. The studies deal with the short-term effects of the pandemic on different economic aspects: economic activity, unemployment benefit claims and new business applications, education outcomes, economic forecasts and teleworking