This paper inquires into how individual attitudes to climate issues and support for climate policies have evolved in the context of the pandemic. Using data from a unique survey of 14,500 individuals across 16 major economies, this study shows that the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic...

Economic volatility remains a fact of life in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA). Household-level shocks create large consumption fluctuations, raising the incidence of poverty. Drawing on micro-level data from South Africa and Tanzania, we examine the vulnerability to shocks across household types (e.g....

This paper studies the effect of digitalization on the perception of corruption and trust in tax officials in Africa. Using individual-level data from Afrobarometer surveys and several indices of digitalization, we find that an increase in digital adoption is associated with a reduction in the...

Maritime data from the Automatic Identification System (AIS) have emerged as a potential source for real time information on trade activity. However, no globally applicable end-to-end solution has been published to transform raw AIS messages into economically meaningful, policy-relevant...

Containment measures are crucial to halt the spread of the 2019 COVID-19 pandemic but entail large short-term economic costs. This paper tries to quantify these effects using daily global data on real-time containment measures and indicators of economic activity such as Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2)...

We study the determinants of new and repeated research collaborations, drawing on the co-authorship network of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)'s Working Papers series. Being an outlet where authors express their views on topics of interest, and given that IMF staff is not subject to the...

One consequence of interest rates remaining 'too low for too long' since the Global Financial Crisis is the buildup in private leverage in emerging economies. These vulnerabilities have been laid bare by the COVID-19 shock. This paper employs the growth at risk framework (Adrian, Boyarchenko,...

In this paper we analyze the fundamental drivers of China's residential investment as a share of its GDP. Our analysis indicates that the economic structural changes that led to rebalancing toward consumption were the key driver of the rising residential investment to GDP ratio in China. We...

This paper studies the impact of expenditure conditionality in IMF programs on the composition of public spending. A granular dataset on different government expenditure conditions covering 115 countries for the 1992-2016 period is compiled. The results support the view that while conditionality...

Do government financial assets help improve public debt sustainability? To answer this question, we assemble a comprehensive dataset on government assets using multiple sources and covering 110 advanced and emerging market economies since the late 1980s. We then use this rich database to...