From health Crisis to debt crisis : Should we be worried - Ugo Panizza

June 8, 2020

Ugo Panizza, Professor of International Economics at the Graduate Institute of Geneva, interviewed by our economist Badr Mandri, goes back over recent developments in sovereign debt, particularly in developing countries, and discusses some interesting analytical issues that have emerged in this context of the coronavirus crisis.

Speakers
Badr Mandri
Economist
Badr Mandri is an Economist who joined Policy Center for the New South after two years’ experience at the Moroccan national statistics office (HCP, High Commission for Planning). His research activities focus on development macroeconomics especially on fiscal policy and development financing. Badr Mandri holds a master’s degree in applied economics, and is currently a PhD student at Mohamed V University in Rabat; ...
Ugo Panizza
Professor of International Economics at the Graduate Institute Geneva (IHEID) and Director of the Institute’s Centre for Finance and Development
Ugo Panizza is Professor of International Economics at the Graduate Institute Geneva (IHEID) and Director of the Institute’s Centre for Finance and Development. Ugo Panizza has been a Visiting Professor at the Institute since 2008, a position he held in addition to being the Chief of the Debt and Finance Analysis Unit at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. He is the Director of the Center for Finance and Development, Director of the International Centre for Monetary and Banking Studies (ICMB), Vice President and Fellow of CEPR, Fellow of the Fondazione Einaudi, and Editor of International Development Policy. Previously, he worked at the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank, alongside holding teaching and research posts at the American Univers ...

RELATED CONTENT

  • December 8, 2020
    COVID-19 showed how unprepared the health systems are to address major pandemics. Except for China, South Korea and Japan, countries have struggled to deal with the pandemic. Lockdowns and quarantines have been incentivised as a strategy. However, many countries have struggled economica...
  • November 24, 2020
    The global economic activity has climbed up since June but there are signs that the recovery may be losing momentum. Instead of a V, U, W, or L, a square root as a recovery shape looks more likely, as we approached before in this series. And the crisis is likely to leave deep, unequal s...
  • Authors
    September 11, 2020
    Latin American and Caribbean economies need help, but organizations like the IDB are also stretched thin. First appeared at Americas Quarterly With Latin America and the Caribbean potentially facing years of difficulties due to the pandemic and related economic crises, attention has shifted to what multilateral institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) might do to help. There’s no doubt they can play a crucial role in preventing another lost decade in the region. But ...
  • Authors
    August 10, 2020
    The International Monetary Fund (IMF) released, on August 4th, its ninth annual External Sector Report, where current account imbalances and asset-liability stocks of 30 systemically large economies are approached. This time the report went beyond looking the previous year and tried to anticipate what will be some of the impacts of the still on-going COVID-19 crisis. The report shows that the global economy entered the COVID-19 crisis with a configuration of external imbalances tha ...
  • Authors
    Jaime Bonet-Morón
    Diana Ricciulli-Marín
    Gerson Javier Pérez-Valbuena
    Luis Armando Galvis-Aponte
    Inácio F. Araújo
    Fernando S. Perobelli
    July 29, 2020
    The aim of this paper is to assess the regional economic impact of the lockdown measures ordered by the national government to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Using an input–output model, we estimate the economic loss of extracting groups of formal and informal workers from different economic sectors. Results show monthly economic losses that represent between 0.5% and 6.1% of national GDP, depending on the scenario considered. Accommodation and food services, real estate, administr ...
  • Authors
    July 20, 2020
    There are signs of recovery in various parts of the global economy, starting in May, after the depressive dip imposed by Covid-19. Such signs emerged after the easing of restrictions on mobility established to flatten out the pandemic curves, and also reflected policies of flattening the recession curve (income transfers to part of the population, credit lines to vulnerable companies and others). Besides remaining far from giving back the GDP lost, in all countries, the recovery fa ...
  • Authors
    July 20, 2020
    This article was originally published on Bruegel. The global economy is showing signs of recovery from the economic crisis caused by COVID-19, though the spread of the coronavirus is accelerating in some countries. In this circumstance, policymakers must weigh up the trade-offs involved in dealing with the pandemic while easing lock downs and sustaining economic activity. Differences in age structures, urbanisation rates and other factors will inform decision making in different co ...
  • July 10, 2020
    L’Afrique fait face à une crise économique sans précédent qui ne manquerait pas de rebondir sur les équilibres économiques et sociales. Pour apaiser la violence du choc et éviter surtout l’installation permanente de ses répercussions, l’Afrique doit déployer des stratégies de ripostes i...
  • Authors
    Abdessalam Jaldi
    June 26, 2020
    La jeune démocratie tunisienne a réussi le double pari de juguler la propagation de la pandémie de la Covid-19, tout en s’érigeant en un modèle régional de gestion de la crise sanitaire. Désormais, le pays doit remédier aux chocs économiques engendrés par la pandémie et pourrait connaitre la pire récession de son histoire. Dans cette tempête annoncée, l’accélération de la transition économique s’avère nécessaire, non seulement pour refonder le système économique, mais aussi pour pré ...
  • Authors
    June 11, 2020
    When the cruise ship the MS Braemar in March had coronavirus cases confirmed on board, it struggled to find somewhere to dock. The Americans turned it away, as did the Bahamas. But another nation, just 200 miles off the U.S. coast, accepted the desperate Braemar. Cuba allowed it to berth in Puerto Mariel, 40 kilometers west of the capital, Havana. Within a day, in cooperation with the British government, Cuban medical teams accompanied more than 680 passengers to Havana airport and ...