Fireside Chat - Resisting the Fragmentation of the World Economy

Globalization has major linkages to the spread of diseases. This paper analyses the link between globalization and the COVID-19 pandemic and provides an overview of how Africa’s economy is being impacted by this new disease. It highlights the impacts on GDP growth and economic sectors. It provides recommendations of what should be done by African governments to address the problem. It concludes by calling on African governments to consider the socio-economic circumstances of their p ...

Les décideurs politiques du monde entier sont confrontés à un dilemme : confiner l’économie et voir la production et l’emploi s’effondrer, ou ouvrir et faire face à une recrudescence des infections et des décès dus au COVID 19 qui submergent le système médical ? Le choix est particulièrement difficile dans les pays pauvres, où beaucoup dépendent de ce qu’ils gagnent au jour le jour et où le système médical n’est pas du tout équipé pour faire face au virus. Dans ce brief, nous souhai ...

This paper aims at evaluating the virtual water content in trade in an intra-country perspective and discussing potential tradeoffs between the use of natural resources and value added creation. We develop a trade-based index that reveals the relative water use intensities associated with specific interregional and international trade flows. The index is calculated considering the measures of water and value added embedded in trade flows associated with each regional origin-destinat ...

In face of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, use of evidence may be key to timely and precise decision-making. This policy brief explores the use of simulations in policy decisionmaking in the Brazilian State of São Paulo in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. We draw briefly on the literature on evidence-based public policy to highlight the exacerbated need for timely decision-making and the role evidence plays in guiding high-level decisionmakers amidst a crisis. We present examples of ...

The Coronavirus’ ugly and fierce spread throughout the world underscores the limitations of health infrastructure and shortcomings in public health administration. What’s more troubling, is the pandemic’s especially pernicious effects on vulnerable populations in the United States—ethnic and racial minorities, disabled persons, women, the elderly, and impoverished communities. The virus knows no boundaries and, yet, structural inequality makes it all the more terrifying for marginal ...

Policymakers across the world face a dilemma: to lockdown the economy, and see output and employment collapse, or to open and face a surge of COVID-19 infections and deaths that could overwhelm the medical system? The choice is especially stark in poor countries, where many depend on what they earn day to day, and where the medical system is entirely unequipped to deal with the virus. In this brief we assess the likely path and geographic spread of the epidemic. We do so by examinin ...

لم تكن الأوبئة التي ساهمت، إلى جانب المجاعات، في تحديد الواقع الديموغرافي لمغرب ما قبل الاستعمار، بالشيء الجديد الطارئ على هذا البلد، الذي ارتبط استقرار نموه البشري بمحددات طبيعية، عجز لحدود تلك الفترة في التحكم فيها. فالوباء ضارب في القدم، وساق في طريقه إلى الحتف جماعات وأفراد من شعوب وأمم مختلفة، اختلفت في تمثله والتعامل معه، بين اعتباره قضاء وقدرا أو عقابا إلاهيا. ولما كان الفشل مصير العديد من محاولات درئه أو التصدي له أو الشفاء منه، فقد كان طبيعيا أن يتم استبطان ثقافة سلبية في ا ...

When in early March, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conti declared a lockdown in his nation, and urgently requested help from his European partners—medical equipment for hospital staff, including gloves and protective clothing, and ventilators, and testing kits—it took several days before there was a response. The BBC reported actions by Germany, France and the Czech Republic which “caused unease, when they decided to block exports of emergency equipment to neighbors in need, unti ...

2020 restera dans l’histoire l’année  du Coronavirus, bien sûr, mais, surtout, celle de l’ébranlement de nos certitudes. Le choc économique provoqué par la pandémie a révélé l’extrême vulnérabilité de la mondialisation, présentée jusque-là comme triomphante. Si nous sommes encore loin de la sortie de crise, nous savons déjà que la mondialisation n’en sortira pas indemne : elle ne sortira pas indemne de la révision radicale du fonctionnement de l’économie, des remises en cause des p ...