To shed light on the possible scarring effects from Covid-19, this paper studies the economic effects of five past pandemics using local projections on a sample of fifty-five countries over 1990-2019. The findings reveal that pandemics have detrimental medium-term effects on output,...

This paper estimates the household income growth rates implied by food demand in a sample of urban Chinese households in 1993–2005. Our estimates, based on Engel curves for food consumption, indicate an average per capita income growth of 6.8 percent per year in 1993–2005. This figure is...

High household wealth is often cited as a key strength of the Italian economy. Both in absolute terms and relative to income, the Italian household sector is wealthier than most euro area peers. A sizable fraction of this wealth is held by the rich and upper middle classes. This paper documents...

The Chinese government has recently focused on the need to increase consumption to rebalance the economy. A widely held view is that despite China''s remarkably high growth, the share of consumption in total expenditure has been low and declining due to high and rising saving rate of Chinese...

This paper gauges the key determinants of China''s private consumption in relation to GDP using data on the Chinese economy and evidence from other countries'' experiences. The results suggest there is nothing ""special"" about consumption in China. Rather, the challenge is to explain why the...

China’s household saving rate has increased markedly since the mid-1990s and the age-savings profile has become U-shaped. We find that rising income uncertainty and pension reforms help explain both of these phenomena. Using a panel of Chinese households covering the period 1989-2006, we...

This paper challenges the conventional wisdom that income inequality in Poland increased substantially following the economic transition in 1989–90. The results, based on micro data from the 1985–92 Household Budget Surveys, indicate that overall income inequality increased during the...

This paper examines the dynamic relationship between trade and income. While most economists agree that increased trade leads to an increase in average income, economic theory is ambiguous about the possible effects on the long-run growth rate of the economy. Using a dynamic panel data model,...

A firm theoretical basis for the empirical relationship between dependency rates and savings behavior in developing countries is still lacking. Two demographic extensions of the representative household’s stochastic dynamic optimization problem are presented here. It is shown that the...