We summarize the unprecedented adverse health and economic impacts as well as policy responses in the Asia and Pacific region and the rest of the world generated by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in 2020. By the end of 2020, over 80 million people had been infected, with developing...

This paper summarizes unprecedented adverse health and economic impacts as well as policy responses in the Asia and Pacific region and the rest of the world generated by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in 2020. By the end of 2020, over 80 million people had been infected, with...

The Asia-Pacific region was the first to be hit by the COVID-19 pandemic; it put a strain on its people and economies, and policymaking became exceptionally difficult. This departmental paper contains the assessment of the key challenges facing Asia at this critical juncture and policy advice to...

This paper uses the onset of COVID-19 to examine how countries construct their policy packages in response to a severe negative shock. We use several new datasets to track the use of a large variety of policy tools: announced fiscal stimulus (both above- and below-the-line), monetary policy...

Crises are a major driving force behind cooperation in the European Union. This holds also for monetary and fiscal policy. During severe crises, cooperation has been enlarged and intensified. The recent covid-19 pandemic is a clear example of this pattern. The pandemic has had huge impact on the...

This paper provides an early estimate of the economic effects of the national quarantine policy associated with the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Using a measure of digital intensity from Gallipoli and Makridis (2018), we exploit counties' exposure to industries that vary in their...

The Covid-19 pandemic led to a large and immediate decline in households’ aggregate spending and a surge in bank and postal deposits; although little is known about how this was distributed. This paper overcomes the lack of timely micro-data on households’ liquidity by looking at supervisory...

The EU in 2020 is in the midst of a triple crisis of unemployment, public health and environmental collapse. These aspects are deeply intertwined and should be tackled together, since they all reflect structural problems of the European labor market. Job Guarantee is the proposed fiscal tool,...

This paper analyses the extent to which additional extraordinary public spending to accelerate vaccination might have been optimal in terms of minimising the public deficit. We use a budget model whose key variable is the present value of cumulative net government revenues over a period of time....

The uncertainty created by the COVID-19 has reinvigorated old debates about the role of the state, highlighting the flexibility of private businesses and civil society and illustrating weaknesses in state planning. The UK healthcare system has struggled to keep up with those in other countries,...