Given the prevalence of informal labor, most countries have combined contributory social insurance programs (pensions, unemployment benefits, and health insurance), with non-contributory insurance programs and several types of "safety nets." All of these programs involve different types of...

Green fiscal reforms would contribute to climate change mitigation, increase the economic efficiency of national tax systems and provide additional public revenues. Some countries in Latin America have already taken first steps towards green fiscal reforms. This outlook article provides an...

Green fiscal reforms would contribute to climate change mitigation, increase the economic efficiency of national tax systems and provide additional public revenues. Some countries in Latin America have already taken first steps towards green fiscal reforms. This paper provides an overview of the...

Economists around the world rely in addition to official statistics on business (and consumer) surveys, which are more up-to-date. However, for many emerging and developing countries there is a lack of such surveys. This gap can, at least partly, be filled by the Ifo World Economic Survey (WES)....

This article aims to explore the intersection between the human security and the climate change security agendas. It asks in which ways a climate change security approach impairs multilateral official channels aimed to enhance the global south demands, especially regarding the sustainable...

It is almost certain that the world economy is entering a recession of historic proportions; how bad things get will depend on how governments manage the Covid-19 pandemic. At the core of the problem lies a very difficult choice: whether to "flatten the curve" of the epidemic or whether to...

With the emergence of the Great Recession unemployment insurance (UI) is once again at the heart of the policy debate. In this paper, we review the recent theoretical and empirical evidence on the labor market effects of UI design. We also discuss policy issues related to UI design, including...