Journal Article
Life with Corona
Gender differences (GD) in mental health have come under renewed scrutiny during the COVID-19 pandemic. While rapidly emerging evidence indicates a deterioration of mental health in general, it remains unknown whether the pandemic will have an impact...
Working Paper
Does an effective government lower COVID-19’s health impact?
Government effectiveness has played an important role in tackling the crisis caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. This paper discusses the different aspects of government effectiveness in explaining the variation in the COVID-19 confirmed...
Working Paper
Duterte’s pandemic populism
The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic undermined the populist legacy of Philippine president Rodrigo R. Duterte. Despite implementing one of the longest and strictest lockdowns globally, the country has struggled with controlling the pandemic. While...
Working Paper
The COVID-19 pandemic and the state in Bihar
This paper presents a critical analysis of official data related to COVID-19 in Bihar state, India, which points to the manipulation of data for political ends. The ruling party’s claim that the state managed the COVID pandemic brilliantly seems more...
Working Paper
Pandemic precarity and the complicated case of Maharashtra
The state of Maharashtra and the city of Mumbai have been referred to as the epidemic epicentre of India since the time of the plague of 1896 and influenza epidemic of 1918. During the COVID-19 pandemic too, the state experienced the highest cases...
Working Paper
An assessment of the effects of COVID-19 pandemic on Kenya’s trade
We examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Kenya’s foreign trade using quarterly trade data for the period 2019 to the second quarter of 2021. The exploratory analysis shows that growth of Kenya’s merchandise exports remained resilient...
Journal Article
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the poor
We examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the livelihoods of the poor in a semi-rural setting in Bangladesh. We use an unusually rich dataset which tracks the economic and financial transactions of sixty poor and very poor individuals and...
Working Paper
The role of trust and of poverty in compliance with social distancing measures in Africa during the COVID-19 pandemic
Since it began, the COVID-19 pandemic has imposed a number of challenges on Africa and the rest of the world. Following the recommendations of the World Health Organization, many countries imposed social distancing measures and cancelled non...
Working Paper
Forecasting recovery from COVID-19 using financial data
We develop a new methodology to nowcast the effects of the COVID-19 crisis and forecast its evolution in small, export-oriented countries. To this aim, we exploit variation in financial indexes at the industry level and relate them to the expected...
Blog
Why countries best placed to handle the pandemic appear to have fared the worst
by
Rachel M. Gisselquist, Andrea Vaccaro
June 2021
During the first year of the pandemic, it was wealthier countries, with their comparatively stronger health systems, civil services, legal systems and...
Working Paper
Analysis of the distributional effects of COVID-19 and state-led remedial measures in South Africa
This paper explores the impact of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa on income poverty and inequality in South Africa. Using a static tax–benefit microsimulation model with input datasets that were adjusted to reflect people’s...
Working Paper
COVID-19 and the state
We expect effective state institutions to matter in a country’s ability to respond to crises. Yet notably in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, what has stood out in simple global snapshots is that wealthier countries with stronger institutions...
Journal Article
Analysis of the distributional effects of COVID-19 and state-led remedial measures in South Africa
This study explores the impact of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa on income poverty and inequality in South Africa. Using a static tax-benefit microsimulation model with input datasets that were adjusted to reflect people’s...
Working Paper
Corruption and crisis: do institutions matter?
While the short-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on lives and livelihoods are well understood, we know little about the effect of the pandemic for longer-term outcomes such as corruption. We look at the historical data on political and economic...
Working Paper
Management of the COVID-19 pandemic in Kerala through the lens of state capacity and clientelism
During the first wave of COVID-19 infections, Kerala, a state in southern India, successfully managed to contain the pandemic. As a result, the Kerala model of managing the COVID-19 pandemic was celebrated as a success across the globe. However, at...
Working Paper
The global inequality boomerang
This paper focuses on the past and potential future evolution of income (or consumption) inequality in the world over the period 1981–2040. Inequality in the world has fallen by most common definitions since the late 1980s, and this is largely due to...