Working Papers

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused the most universal health and socio-economic crisis in recent history. However, the magnitude of the economic damage has differed widely; some countries were hit particularly hard, while others have managed to weather the storm much better. In this paper, we use cross-country regression analysis to identify factors that help explain the differences in the growth impact of the COVID-19 shock. Our findings underscore the critical role of balancing health and economic concerns in managing the pandemic as both a country’s exposure to the coronavirus and the stringency of containment measures are strongly correlated with its growth performance. In addition,…

In Article 25 (1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations recognized in 1948 the basic human right to “security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond ... control.” This paper examines how economic insecurity is related to, yet different from, poverty and inequality, why it matters for human well-being and how it has been changing in different countries around the world in recent years. The paper concludes with discussion of how economic insecurity has been and will be affected by the Covid-19 pandemic/recession.

Productive and technological capabilities matter. The more conventional strands of the literature have emphasized them as major engines of export, growth and development. But how they matter is less clear, and many open questions remain on how capabilities influence export dynamics at microeconomic level. This paper empirically investigates their role on export dynamics in 40 developing countries between 2002 and 2012. In doing so, the paper exploits a country-sector-year database containing exporter-level statistical information. The empirical analysis shows that, within sectors, countries with higher productive capacities have more exporters, and the exporters are larger and charge…