The simple answer to both questions in the title of this paper is: No. We concentrate on the three main risk elements that contributed to the banking system’s difficulties during the crisis: increasing dollarization of the balance sheet, expanding exposure to the government, and, eventually,...

Despite significant headwinds from population aging in most advanced economies (AEs), labor force participation rates show remarkably divergent trajectories both across countries and across different groups of workers. Participation increased sharply among prime-age women and, more recently,...

Public health spending is low in emerging and developing economies relative to advanced economies and health outputs and outcomes need to be substantially improved. Simply increasing public expenditure in the health sector, however, may not significantly affect health outcomes if the efficiency...

The large economic costs of full-blown lockdowns in response to COVID-19 outbreaks, coupled with heterogeneous mortality rates across age groups, led to question non-discriminatory containment measures. In this paper we provide an assessment of the targeted approach to containment. We propose a...

Lockdowns and voluntary social distancing led to significant reduction in people's mobility. Yet, there is scant evidence on the heterogeneous effects across segments of the population. Using unique mobility indicators based on anonymized and aggregate data provided by Vodafone for Italy,...