The global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been staggering, with over 4.3 million confirmed cases and over 290,000 deaths reported worldwide. In addition to the public health crisis, the pandemic has caused significant economic disruption, leading to fears of a global recession. The...

This address considers the epidemiology of narratives relevant to economic fluctuations. The human brain has always been highly tuned towards narratives, whether factual or not, to justify ongoing actions, even such basic actions as spending and investing. Stories motivate and connect activities...

Following a period of subdued consumer price changes, inflation has recently surged to levels that are significantly impacting the behavior of households and firms. Although the underlying sources of inflation differ across major advanced economies, central banks have progressively tightened...

We examine the efficacy of affirmative action at universities whose value depends on peer and alumni networks. We study an elite Brazilian university that adopted race- and income-based affirmative action at a large scale. Using employer-employee data, we show that a key benefit of attending the...

COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on the global economy. In this paper, we use Phillips curve to compare and analyze the macroeconomics of three different countries with distinct income levels, namely, lower-middle (Nigeria), upper-middle (South Africa), and high (Canada) income. We...

The Azerbaijani economy is facing a massive crisis due to the systemic failure of the government to enact reforms. Global oil prices drop and the COVID-19 pandemic is widening the chasm between the haves and have-nots

La versione italiana di questo documento è disponibile al seguente link: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3663335The present Report analyses the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic as of the first semester of 2020 both in the domestic and in the international framework. Some analysis are updated...

COVID-19 is spreading and has reached the state of a worldwide pandemic and health systems are or will be tested in how they can deal with it. So far, during this early phase of the pandemic, outcomes in terms of case-fatality rates (CFR) differ widely across countries. We explore how...