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Blog Post
November 08, 2021
In a study of 131 IMF programs, I found that IMF conditionality in general helped to shield education and health spending from budget cuts in the short term, particularly during budget negotiations, but it did not succeed in significantly raising spending in relation to GDP over time. In this light,...
Blog Post
October 26, 2021
Africa’s informal sector remains the largest in the world. According to the International Labor Organization, it claims almost 90 percent of the economy in sub-Saharan Africa and about two-thirds in North Africa (although there is significant heterogeneity in its size across countries).
Blog Post
October 07, 2021
In May, we examined the possibility of Southeast Asian countries working together to create a regional COVID-19 Vaccination Certification (CVC) system. How far have Southeast Asian countries come in their CVC efforts? What form can certificates take and how can their authenticity be verified, given ...
Blog Post
August 25, 2021
Among the multilateral development banks, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) stands out for its strong financial support for COVID-19 response relative to its overall lending volume. While ADB has proven to be responsive to government’s general financing needs during the crisis, has ADB’s performance ...
Blog Post
August 04, 2021
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of vaccines and reopening, it was the age of the Delta variant and closing down again. For many of us, the past year and a half has been stranger than fiction, a whirlwind of emotions and uncertainties. We hope this year's summer re...
Blog Post
July 15, 2021
In a recent joint piece, African and European leaders underscored the importance of strengthening the positions and roles of pan-African institutions within a new international financial architecture, reaffirming one of the four key goals of the summit on financing African economies held last May in...
Blog Post
June 30, 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed 120 million people across the globe into extreme poverty, and the limited data available thus far suggests that the wealth of extremely rich individuals has risen at the same time. In this blog post, we provide new evidence that in addition to its human cost, te...