Large and persistent gaps in social protection coverage, comprehensiveness and adequacy are linked to many barriers, including high levels of informality, institutional fragmentation of the social protection system and significant financing gaps for social protection in a context of limited...

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused massive disruptions to the global economy and forced policymakers to respond to the newly created challenges. Many policy institutions have therefore had to rethink their established approaches and their usual policy responses.

The paper studies empirically the fiscal policy instruments by which governments try to influence election outcomes in 24 developing countries for the 1973-1992 period. The study finds that the main vehicle for expansionary fiscal policies around elections is increasing public expenditure rather...

This paper examines the interplay between exchange rate regimes and policies and commercial policy in six transition economies. In all these economies the rate of protection afforded domestic industry by the exchange rate has been eroded by high rates of inflation and insufficient growth in...

The COVID-19 pandemic, as with previous major crises, such as the 2008 financial crisis, has had a severe negative impact on international trade flows. The present paper aims to contribute to the debate concerning how to foster resilience against future crises, in terms of countries' aggregate...