{"title":"An Assessment of the Social Policy of the State during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Azerbaijan","authors":"G. Ibadoghlu","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3923930","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3923930","url":null,"abstract":"The new social and economic behavior environment in the world and in Azerbaijan emerged in connection with the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in 2020 has created new challenges in providing assistance to vulnerable social groups, state support for business, and made it necessary to create additional funding for health. One of the important tasks facing governments in this regard is to protect existing jobs, prevent mass unemployment, and provide effective social protection and health services to those who have lost their jobs and the poor. The Azerbaijani government, which has been able to cope with this task, albeit partially, over the past year, has not continued any of its commitments, suspending or restricting most social protection measures in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic this year. In this article, we will first take a retrospective look at the measures taken last year and try to assess the current situation.","PeriodicalId":20373,"journal":{"name":"Political Economy - Development: Health eJournal","volume":"97 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89104934","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Response of the S&P 1500 during the COVID-19 Pandemic and ESG Scores","authors":"R. Gregory","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3920345","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3920345","url":null,"abstract":"Examining the S&P 1500 stocks, the responses of the stocks to fiscal and monetary policy are found to differ due to E, S and G scores by the type of legislation. Non-Financial firms that manage environmental and governance risks better performed better over the pandemic Part of this was due to their high environmental and governance scores allowing them to hedge the negative effects of the announcements of fiscal policies during the pandemic.","PeriodicalId":20373,"journal":{"name":"Political Economy - Development: Health eJournal","volume":"35 4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81202279","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
P. Flaschel, G. Galanis, Daniele Tavani, Roberto Veneziani
{"title":"Pandemics and Economic Activity: A Framework for Policy Analysis","authors":"P. Flaschel, G. Galanis, Daniele Tavani, Roberto Veneziani","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3770391","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3770391","url":null,"abstract":"This paper studies the interaction between epidemiological dynamics and the dynamics of economic activity in a simple model in the structuralist/post-Keynesian tradition. On the one hand, rising economic activity increases the contact rate and therefore the probability of exposure to a virus. On the other hand, rising infection lowers economic activity through both supply and demand channels. The resulting framework is well-suited for policy analysis through numerical exercises. We show that, first, laissez-faire gives rise to sharp fluctuations in activity and infections before herd immunity is achieved. Second, absent any restrictions on economic activity, physical distancing measures have rather limited mitigating effects. Third, lockdowns are effective, especially at reducing death rates while buying time before a vaccine is widely rolled out, at the cost of a slightly more pronounced downturn in economic activity compared with alternative policies. This casts some doubt on the so-called \"lives versus livelihood\" policy trade-off. However, we also highlight the importance of policies aimed at mitigating the effects of the epidemic on workers' income.","PeriodicalId":20373,"journal":{"name":"Political Economy - Development: Health eJournal","volume":"44 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85376118","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Kaviya Selvi S., Uma Maheswari K., Francis Kuriakose
{"title":"Re-Imagining Labour Rights in the Online Gig Economy after COVID-19","authors":"Kaviya Selvi S., Uma Maheswari K., Francis Kuriakose","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3921071","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3921071","url":null,"abstract":"The COVID-19 crisis brought out the woes of India’s online gig workers as the lack of labour rights such as regulated hours of work, minimum wages, data rights and social protection exacerbated the precarity and insecurity of their work. In this context, this paper examines the question, how can labour rights be re-imagined for online gig workers in India. In particular, the study is interested in what type of rights constitute workers’ rights when work traverses online and offline medium as well as multiple legal orders such as formal and the informal sector of the economy. How can these interrelationships be acknowledged and imagined in a framework of rights? These are some of the aspects of the question, this study attempts to answer.","PeriodicalId":20373,"journal":{"name":"Political Economy - Development: Health eJournal","volume":"61 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81421903","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"COVID Response: The Fed’s Central Bank Swap Lines and FIMA Repo Facility","authors":"Mark Choi, L. Goldberg, R. Lerman, F. Ravazzolo","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3931682","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3931682","url":null,"abstract":"Building on the facility design and application experience from the period of the global financial crisis, in March 2020 the Federal Reserve eased the terms on its standing swap lines in collaboration with other central banks, reactivated temporary swap agreements, and then introduced the new Foreign and International Monetary Authorities (FIMA) repo facility. While these facilities share similarities, they are different in their operations, breadth of counterparties and potential span of effects. This article provides key details on these facilities and evidence that the central bank swap lines and FIMA repo facility can reduce strains in global dollar funding markets and U.S. Treasury markets during extreme stress events.","PeriodicalId":20373,"journal":{"name":"Political Economy - Development: Health eJournal","volume":"301 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83444745","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Henning Hermes, Philipp Lergetporer, Frauke H. Peter, Simon Wiederhold
{"title":"Behavioral Barriers and the Socioeconomic Gap in Child Care Enrollment","authors":"Henning Hermes, Philipp Lergetporer, Frauke H. Peter, Simon Wiederhold","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3924099","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3924099","url":null,"abstract":"Children with lower socioeconomic status (SES) tend to benefit more from early child care, but are substantially less likely to be enrolled. We study whether reducing behavioral barriers in the application process increases enrollment in child care for lower-SES children. In our RCT in Germany with highly subsidized child care (n > 600), treated families receive application information and personal assistance for applications. For lower-SES families, the treatment increases child care application rates by 21 pp and enrollment rates by 16 pp. Higher-SES families are not affected by the treatment. Thus, alleviating behavioral barriers closes half of the SES gap in early child care enrollment.","PeriodicalId":20373,"journal":{"name":"Political Economy - Development: Health eJournal","volume":"115 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74896025","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Agostino Consolo, G. Cette, A. Bergeaud, Vincent Labhard, C. Osbat, S. Kosekova, G. Basso, Henrique S. Basso, Elena Bobeica, Emanuela Ciapanna, Luca Dedola, Claudia Foroni, Hanna Freystatter, C. Girón, Benny Hartwig, Mario Izquierdo Peinado, Valerie Jarvis, Eduardo Maqui Lopez, Matthias F. Mohr, R. Morris, Gergő Motyovszki, Anton A. Nakov, Penjo Rebelo, Filippos Petroulakis, Ieva Rubene, R. Trezzi, Lara Vivian
{"title":"Digitalisation: Channels, Impacts and Implications for Monetary Policy in the Euro Area","authors":"Agostino Consolo, G. Cette, A. Bergeaud, Vincent Labhard, C. Osbat, S. Kosekova, G. Basso, Henrique S. Basso, Elena Bobeica, Emanuela Ciapanna, Luca Dedola, Claudia Foroni, Hanna Freystatter, C. Girón, Benny Hartwig, Mario Izquierdo Peinado, Valerie Jarvis, Eduardo Maqui Lopez, Matthias F. Mohr, R. Morris, Gergő Motyovszki, Anton A. Nakov, Penjo Rebelo, Filippos Petroulakis, Ieva Rubene, R. Trezzi, Lara Vivian","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3928287","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3928287","url":null,"abstract":"The digitalisation workstream report analyses the degree of digital adoption across the euro area and EU countries and the implications of digitalisation for measurement, productivity, labour markets and inflation, as well as more recent developments during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and their implications. Analysis of these key issues and variables is aimed at improving our understanding of the implications of digitalisation for monetary policy and its transmission. The degree of digital adoption differs across the euro area/EU, implying heterogeneous impacts, with most EU economies currently lagging behind the United States and Japan. Rising digitalisation has rendered price measurement more challenging, owing to, among other things, faster changes in products and product quality, but also new ways of price setting, e.g. dynamic or customised pricing, and services that were previously payable but are now “free”. Despite the spread of digital technologies, aggregate productivity growth has decreased in most advanced economies since the 1970s. However, it is likely that without the spread of digital technologies the productivity slowdown would have been even more pronounced, and the recent acceleration in digitalisation is likely to boost future productivity gains from digitalisation. Digitalisation has spurred greater automation, with temporary labour market disruptions, albeit unevenly across sectors. The long-run employment effects of digitalisation can be benign, but its effects on wages and labour share depend on the structure of the economy and its labour market institutions. The pandemic has accelerated the use of teleworking: roughly every third job in the euro area/EU is teleworkable, although there are differences across countries. ...","PeriodicalId":20373,"journal":{"name":"Political Economy - Development: Health eJournal","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89922833","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Michigan Local Governments Report Fewer Economic Challenges One Year into the COVID-19 Pandemic, and Describe Efforts to Support Local Businesses","authors":"Natalie Fitzpatrick, D. Horner, Thomas M. Ivacko","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3942890","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3942890","url":null,"abstract":"This report presents local government leaders’ views on COVID-19’s impact on local economic conditions, as well as reports of whether or not their local governments took action to help local businesses during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic and assessments of any actions taken. These findings are based on statewide surveys of local government leaders in the Spring 2021 wave of the Michigan Public Policy Survey (MPPS), conducted between April 5 and June 7, 2021.","PeriodicalId":20373,"journal":{"name":"Political Economy - Development: Health eJournal","volume":"3 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73282556","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"An Optimal Solution to a Resource Allocation Problem under COVID-19 Financial Constraints","authors":"Bruno Kamdem","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3913808","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3913808","url":null,"abstract":"Public health implications of COVID-19 resulted in widespread business closures and job losses. Disruptions in the service and transportation sectors, acute reductions in income, and an uptick in unemployment were the outcome of pandemic mitigating procedures adopted by many governments. While these measures succeeded in curving death rates, they failed to protect the economy and resulted in many parts of the world in economic covidmageddon. In this paper, we use optimization tools to study a well known problem of resource allocation in microeconomics and adapt it to the financial constraints created by COVID-19. We formulate the resource allocation problem as a finite-dimensional convex program under appropriate assumptions. Important properties of the constraints and objective function are discussed, which yield the existence and uniqueness of the optimal solution under the constraints created by COVID-19. The optimality conditions and KKT conditions are derived under a constraint qualification result. We then focus on the COVID-19 allocation problem for which a closed-form optimal solution is obtained. The corresponding exogenous growth model is discussed. The Solow model is derived using raw dynamic programming. We subsequently obtain and present the relevant economic implications for the protection of economic prosperity during pandemics such as COVID-19.","PeriodicalId":20373,"journal":{"name":"Political Economy - Development: Health eJournal","volume":"7 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76307592","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Melting down of Sri Lankan Economy and It’s Impacts Due to COVID-19","authors":"Prabashini Bagya","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3913610","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3913610","url":null,"abstract":"COVID-19 is the most tragic disease which has been discovered most recently by Corona virus. It originated from Wuhan, China in December 2019 and currently this virus is widespread all over the world by damaging various sectors. Because of that, The World Health Organization declared a global emergency condition. All the affected countries have been looking for a safety precaution while few countries are researching the specific vaccine against this Corona virus. But currently with lack of awareness and management, it has gone out of hand. Sri Lanka also has made great procedures in controlling the widespread of COVID-19 for more than six months in a pandemic situation. However, still not yet over. Apart from the disastrous effects that have done for the health sector in Sri Lanka, the impacts of COVID-19 on the economy in Sri Lanka are also tragic as well. This study comprehensively discusses the impacts of COVID-19 on GDP, employment, tourism, poverty, household income, exchange rates and remittances. The analysis reveals COVID-19 creates adverse impact on both GDP and employment in Sri Lanka. But the magnitude of this impact is lower than that of the South Asian average. COVID-19 drastically affected the key income earning sector; tourism as well. Due to the restriction on travel by airways and ports, the earning of tourism has dropped by 1,901 USD to 956USD from January to June each 2019 and 2010 respectively. In addition to major economic impacts, this study follows the microeconomic impacts on COVID-19 by highlighting poverty dynamics under four way classification. The prediction reveals that there is a greater potential of increasing poverty which is related to all poverty types as extreme poor, poor and vulnerable non-poor. Also this study briefly examines the potential impacts that the COVID-19 crisis will have on household welfare in Sri Lanka, analyzing stimulated impacts on household income using both pessimistic and optimistic scenarios. As the weakening of export earnings, tourism receipts and remittances, the Sri Lankan rupee has depreciated against the major world currencies. Significantly, the impact of COVID-19 on the economy will be higher than the expected. Hence, the Sri Lankan government should take steps and measures to rebuild the economy while controlling the spread.","PeriodicalId":20373,"journal":{"name":"Political Economy - Development: Health eJournal","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74984785","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}