The COVID-19 pandemic has claimed more than 1.5 million lives globally, and resulted in the worst global recession since the Second World War. This policy report provides an overview of the number of cases, death toll, and economic disruption that COVID-19 has caused, as well as of the measures...

This study analyses which individual and institutional factors (causally) influence individuals in their educational career and in their choice for an occupation. Chapter 2 explores consequences of parental separation for cognitive skill development of children. In the year before parental...

Florian Dorn prepared this study during his doctoral studies at the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich (LMU). The study was completed in September 2020 and accepted as doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics. This dissertation contributes to the empirics of public economics and...

Lea Immel prepared this study while she was working at the Research Group Taxation and Fiscal Policy at the ifo Institute. The study was completed in September 2020 and accepted as doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. It consists of four distinct empirical...

This article looks into global central bank messaging on the Twitter social media platform. At the end of 2021, a total of 122 central banks and monetary authorities had registered accounts on Twitter At that time, approximately two-thirds of world's central banks and monetary author- ities were...

The COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted the global and each national economy, and also people's well-being and individual livelihoods. Vulnerable groups have been hit particularly hard, given their often precarious and dependent financial situation coupled with inadequate social protection...

The COVID-19 crisis intensified decade-long debates on the interaction between intellectual property rights (IPRs), competition law and access to affordable life-saving treatments and vaccines. Compulsory licensing of patented medicines is a tried-and-tested method to expand access, particularly...

The negotiations on the Pandemic Agreement offered a key opportunity for the World Health Organization's (WHO) 194 Member States to address the weaknesses of existing international regulations governing global health - and to adopt a new legal instrument at the Seventy-seventh World Health...

The Scottish Government's Budget for 2024-25 takes place at a time of particular uncertainty about the future funding environment. UK government spending plans both for the coming year and for later years seem likely to be topped up, but when and by how much is unclear. The current UK government...

We describe how the size and shape of the state have changed since the mid 1950s and over the 2019-24 parliament, and discuss the future outlook.