A Commentary by Jai Krishna Ponnappan: COVID-19

Showing posts with label COVID-19. Show all posts

Improving The International Financial And Fiscal System's COVID-19 And Crisis Response In The Post-Pandemic Era.

The worldwide economic crisis brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately impacted poor nations, resulting in increased poverty, food insecurity, and income inequality.

Richer countries used unusually huge fiscal and financial assistance programs to buffer their economies from the harshest effects.

Developing nations lacked such capabilities and received little multilateral contingency funding, highlighting fundamental flaws in the international financial and fiscal system (IFFS).

The IFFS will be better suited to serve sustainable development if four reforms are implemented:

(a) an equitable international tax coordination mechanism;
(b) a multilaterally backed sovereign debt workout mechanism;
(c) overhauling policy consistency associated with development finance; and
(d) increasing the use of Special Drawing Rights for development finance.

As with past pandemics, the COVID-19 pandemic and its social and economic consequences have resulted in a sharp drop in economic activity (van Bergeijk, 2021).

However, not all people and nations have been harmed equally.

The epidemic has expanded inequality in high-income nations in Europe and North America, since highly skilled employees and capital owners were much less impacted than other groups.

Developing nations, particularly the most vulnerable portions of their populations, were disproportionately affected, leading to increased poverty, food insecurity, and poor nutrition.

Because industrialized nations had more fiscal freedom, they were able to invest significantly in required health measures, social safety net extension, and economic stimulation, something that most emerging countries were unable to achieve.

Due to the weakening of multilateralism itself (van der Hoeven, 2020) and, more crucially, inherent flaws in the IFFS' ability to function as an international financial and social safety net in a global crisis, the multilateral system has so far failed to come to their financial rescue.

Proposals to reform the existing IFFS emerge with each crisis, but as I have demonstrated, if the key changes had been in place from the start of the pandemic, the global economic ramifications would have been less severe, and much of the increase in global poverty could have been avoided.

To put it another way, they are now more important than ever.

Changes to the IFFS are not acts of charity; they are necessary to return to sustainable and equitable global growth, without which gains for some countries and country groups that now promote a "me first" attitude in health issues and a return to protectionism will not be sustainable in the long run, resulting in lower global growth and a reversal in the upward trend toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.

~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan.

You may also want to read more analysis about the COVID-19 Pandemic here.

Sources & References:

Afesorgbor, S. K., van Bergeijk, P. A. G., & Demena, B. A. (2021). COVID-19 and the threat to globalization: An optimistic note. In E. Papyrakis (Ed.), Covid-19 and international development. Springer.

Chandrasekhar, C. P. (2021). The challenge of LDC debt. Economic and Political Weekly, 56(3).

https://www.networkideas.org/news-analysis/2021/02/the-challenge-of-ldc-debt/.

Chowdhury, A., & Jomo, K. S. (2021). IMF, World Bank must urgently help finance developing countries. Blog. Available at: https://www.ksjomo.org/post/imf-world-bank-must-support developing-countries-recovery. Accessed on 30 Mar 2021.

Development Initiatives. (2021). Aid data 2019–2020: Analysis of trends before and during COVID-19. Briefing. Available at: https://devinit.org/resources/aid-data-2019-2020-analysis trends-before-during-covid/#downloads.

FACTI Panel. (2021). Financial Integrity for Sustainable Development. Report of the High-Level Panel on International Financial Accountability, Transparency and Integrity for Achieving the 2030 Agenda. Financial Accountability, Transparency and Integrity (FACTI), New York.

Available at: https://www.factipanel.org/explore-the-report

Gallagher, K., & Carlin F. M. (2020). The role of IMF in the fight against COVID-19: The IMF Covid Response Index. Covid Economics 42, 19 August 2020.

Gallagher, K., Gao, H., Kring, W., Ocampo, J. A., & Volz, U. (2021). Safety first: Expanding the global financial safety net in response to COVID-19. Global Policy, 12(1), 140–148.

Goolsbee, A., & Syverson, C. (2020). Fear, lockdown and diversion: Comparing drivers of pandemic economic decline 2020 (NBER Working Paper 27432). National Bureau of Economic Research.

Haan, R. (1971). Special drawing rights and development. Stenfert Kroese.

Herman, B., Ocampo, J. A., & Spiegel, S. (2010). Overcoming developing country debt crises. Oxford University Press.

ICRIT. (2020). The Global pandemic, sustainable economic recovery, and international taxation. Independent Commission for the Reform of International Taxation. Available at: https://www.icrict.com/icrict-documentsthe-global-pandemic-sustainable-economic-recovery-and-international-taxation.

ILO. (2021). ILO Monitor: COVID-19 and the world of work. Seventh edition updated estimates and analysis. International Labour Organization, Geneva, Switzerland. Available at: https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/coronavirus/impacts-and-responses/WCMS_767028/lang%2D%2Den/index.htm.

IMF. (2021a). World Economic Outlook, January 2021. International Monetary Fund. Available at:

https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/Issues/2021/01/26/2021-world-economic-outlook-update.

IMF. (2021b). Fiscal monitor. Database of country fiscal measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. International Monetary Fund. Data available at: https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/imfand-covid19/Fiscal-Policies-Database-in-Response-to-COVID-19.

The pandemic and the economic crisis: A global agenda for urgent action(Interim report of the commission for global economic transformation). Institute for New Economic Thinking. Available at: https://www.ineteconomics.org/research/research-papers/

the-pandemic-and-the-economic-crisis-a-global-agenda-for-urgent-action.

Laborde, D., Martin, W., & Vos, R. (2020). Impacts of COVID-19 on global poverty, food security and diets (IFPRI Discussion Paper 01993 December). International Food Policy Research Institute.

Laborde, D., Martin, W., & Vos, R. (2021). Impacts of COVID-19 on global poverty, food security and diets. Agricultural Economics, 52(3), 375–390. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.12624.

Mahler, D., Lakner, C, Castaneda Aguilar, R., & Wu, H. (2020). The impact of COVID-19 (Coronavirus) on global poverty: Why Sub-Saharan Africa might be the region hardest hit?

World Bank Data Blog. Available at: https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/updated-estimates impact-covid-19-global-poverty.

Mukhtarov, M., Papyrakis, E., & Rieger, M. (2021). Covid-19 and water. In E. Papyrakis (Ed.), Covid-19 and international development. Springer.

Murshed, S. M. (2021). Consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic for economic inequality. In E. Papyrakis (Ed.), Covid-19 and international development. Springer.

Ocampo, J. A. (2015). Reforming the international monetary and fnancial architecture. In J. A. Alonso & J. A. Ocampo (Eds.), Global governance and rules for the post-2015 era(pp. 41–72). Bloomsbury Academic.

Oxfam. (2020). Behind the numbers: A dataset on spending, accountability and recovery measures included in IMF Covid-19 loans. Online database. Oxfam. Available at https://www.oxfam.org/en/international-fnancial-institutions/imf-covid-19-fnancing-and-fscal-tracker.

Oxfam. (2021a). The inequality virus (Oxfam Briefing paper (January)). Oxfam. Available at

https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621149/bp-the-inequality virus-250121-en.pdf.

Oxfam. (2021b). Austerity is not a fair shot: 4 observations on the IMF’s latest COVID 19 loans(Oxfam Briefing paper (April)). Oxfam. Available at: https://medium.com/@OxfamIFIs/austerity-is-not-a-fair-shot-fdc4e11a06b6.

Sumner, A., Hoy, C., & Ortiz-Juarez, E. (2020). Estimates of the impact of COVID-19 on global poverty (WIDER Working Paper 2020/43). World Institute for Development Economics Research. Available at: https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/fles/Publications/Working paper/PDF/wp2020-43.pdf.

UN-DESA. (2021). World economic situation and prospects (Monthly Briefing No 146 (5 February 2021)). United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Available at: https://www.un.org/development/desa/dpad/publication/world-economic-situation-and-prospects february-2021-briefng-no-146/

R. van der Hoeven and R. Vos 27 United Nations. (2012). World Economic and Social Survey 2012: In search for new international development finance. United Nations. Available at: http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/policy/wess/wess_current/2012wess.pdf.

Liquidity and debt solutions to invest in the SDGs: The time to act is now (UN secretary-general policy brief (March 21)). United Nations. Available at: https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/fles/sg_policy_brief_on_liquidity_and_debt_solutions_march_2021.pdf.

Van Bergeijk, P. (2021). Pandemic economics. Edward Elgar Publishers.

van der Hoeven, R. (2020). Multilateralism, employment and inequality in the context of COVID-19. In UN committee for development policy (UNCDP), 2020, development policy and multilateralism after COVID-19. United Nations.

Vos, R. (2017). From billions to trillions: Towards reform of development finance and the global reserve system. In P. van Bergeijk & R. van der Hoeven (Eds.), Sustainable development goals and inequality. Edward Elgar. World Bank. (2020a).

Poverty and shared prosperity 2020: Reversals of fortune. The World Bank.

Available at: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/34496.

World Bank. (2020b). Global economic prospects 2020. The World Bank. Available at: https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/global-economic-prospects.

COVID-19 - Fundamental Flaws In The International Financial And Fiscal System Exposed.

The worldwide economic crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed fundamental flaws in the international financial and fiscal system once again (IFFS).

It failed to respond adequately to the crisis, particularly in low-income nations, which were badly struck by the pandemic's worldwide economic consequences.

Despite the fact that the pandemic had a less widespread impact on health conditions in many low-income countries, they were disproportionately affected by the spillover effects of the economic crisis in major economies, particularly those in Europe and the United States, and had few financial resources to mitigate the impact on their populations' livelihoods.

In this paper, we look at how the pandemic has affected people's livelihoods throughout the globe.

Here I explain how the COVID-19 problem has triggered a significant global recession, with possibly long-term consequences for human development, rising poverty, income inequality, and food insecurity.

Even though they have been less affected by the pandemic's expansion, some of the world's poorest nations, such as those in Africa, are among the most impacted economically.

While high-income countries have made exceptional steps to alleviate livelihood consequences, poor countries' reactions have been subdued due to a lack of financial resources.

The economic implications of the pandemic have once again exposed the flaws in the present IFFS, which fails to provide sufficient contingency funding where it is most required.

Whereas high-income countries could engage in large and practically costless fiscal and monetary growth, poor countries racked up massive debts and suffered acute liquidity constraints when it came to even the most basic debt refinancing.

The IFFS' flaws include pervasive biases in internationally poorly-coordinated tax systems, resulting in tax base erosion and profit shifting, the inadequacy of international contingency financing mechanisms, the lack of appropriate sovereign debt management mechanisms, and the absence of a truly international currency that could serve as a multilateral source of liquidity provisioning during times of crisis.

Here I discuss ways to address these IFFS flaws in the short and medium term, such as reforming international tax coordination mechanisms, establishing a multilaterally backed sovereign debt workout mechanism, reforming policy conditionality attached to contingency financing, and issuing additional, truly international liquidity in the form of Special Drawing Rights, both to provide additional contingency financing and to levee.

With such measures in place, the pandemic response would have given a more equal playing field for rising and developing nations, as well as minimized the worst economic impacts of the pandemic.

Apart from the pandemic, these measures will promote recovery and concentrate international development finance on the globally accepted Sustainable Development Goals.

Important political difficulties will have to be overcome to adopt such changes in the current climate of fading multilateralism as outline here.

It's worth noting that the international community has made numerous efforts toward implementing these proposals since the time of publication (April 2021).

First, the Group of Twenty (G20) major nations agreed to a unified corporate tax rate of 25% in an attempt to curb profit shifting by multinational corporations, a problem that is already undermining many countries' tax bases.

Second, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has approved the release of 650 billion dollars in Special Drawing Rights (SDRs).

Although suitable allocation methods for the use of the increased foreign liquidity have yet to be agreed upon, this is a significant step forward.

It demonstrates that change is achievable, despite the fact that there is still a long way to go.

~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan.

You may also want to read more analysis about the COVID-19 Pandemic here.

Sources & References:

Chandrasekhar, C. P. (2021). The challenge of LDC debt. Economic and Political Weekly, 56(3).

https://www.networkideas.org/news-analysis/2021/02/the-challenge-of-ldc-debt/.

Available at: https://www.factipanel.org/explore-the-report

Gallagher, K., & Carlin F. M. (2020). The role of IMF in the fight against COVID-19: The IMF Covid Response Index. Covid Economics 42, 19 August 2020.

Gallagher, K., Gao, H., Kring, W., Ocampo, J. A., & Volz, U. (2021). Safety first: Expanding the global financial safety net in response to COVID-19. Global Policy, 12(1), 140–148.

Goolsbee, A., & Syverson, C. (2020). Fear, lockdown and diversion: Comparing drivers of pandemic economic decline 2020 (NBER Working Paper 27432). National Bureau of Economic Research.

Haan, R. (1971). Special drawing rights and development. Stenfert Kroese.

Herman, B., Ocampo, J. A., & Spiegel, S. (2010). Overcoming developing country debt crises. Oxford University Press.

IMF. (2021a). World Economic Outlook, January 2021. International Monetary Fund. Available at:

https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/Issues/2021/01/26/2021-world-economic-outlook-update.

the-pandemic-and-the-economic-crisis-a-global-agenda-for-urgent-action.

Laborde, D., Martin, W., & Vos, R. (2020). Impacts of COVID-19 on global poverty, food security and diets (IFPRI Discussion Paper 01993 December). International Food Policy Research Institute.

Laborde, D., Martin, W., & Vos, R. (2021). Impacts of COVID-19 on global poverty, food security and diets. Agricultural Economics, 52(3), 375–390. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.12624.

Mahler, D., Lakner, C, Castaneda Aguilar, R., & Wu, H. (2020). The impact of COVID-19 (Coronavirus) on global poverty: Why Sub-Saharan Africa might be the region hardest hit?

World Bank Data Blog. Available at: https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/updated-estimates impact-covid-19-global-poverty.

Mukhtarov, M., Papyrakis, E., & Rieger, M. (2021). Covid-19 and water. In E. Papyrakis (Ed.), Covid-19 and international development. Springer.

Murshed, S. M. (2021). Consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic for economic inequality. In E. Papyrakis (Ed.), Covid-19 and international development. Springer.

Oxfam. (2021a). The inequality virus (Oxfam Briefing paper (January)). Oxfam. Available at

https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621149/bp-the-inequality virus-250121-en.pdf.

Van Bergeijk, P. (2021). Pandemic economics. Edward Elgar Publishers.

Poverty and shared prosperity 2020: Reversals of fortune. The World Bank.

Available at: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/34496.

World Bank. (2020b). Global economic prospects 2020. The World Bank. Available at: https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/global-economic-prospects.

COVID-19 - Economic, Social, And Nutritional Effects Of The Crisis.

More than half of the world's population has been, is, or will be subjected to some type of social distancing regime aimed at containing the COVID-19-related health catastrophe.

Business activity has dropped dramatically as a result of a mix of policy and personal reactions aimed at lowering the danger of getting the virus, with personal action likely being more significant than policy in lowering economic activity (Goolsbee and Syverson, 2020).

The combined supply and demand shock triggered a worldwide recession far worse than that of the global financial crisis of 2008–2009, owing to production disruptions and income losses.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF, 2021a, b) estimates that the effects will last for a long period.

Despite a visible rebound in 2021, global GDP is expected to be 3.7 percent lower than pre-COVID levels by January 2022.

The poor world has been affected the worst, with GDP losses estimated at 8% in developing Asia (excluding China) and 6.9% and 6.1 percent in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa, respectively.

Apart from supply interruptions induced by governments' lockdown measures in these areas, developing nations are harmed most by the transmission of the European and American recessions via trade, finance, and remittance networks.

The significant reduction of working hours throughout the globe has been a fundamental indication of the recession.

According to the International Labour Organization (ILO, 2021), about half of all working-hour losses in 2020 were attributable to job losses, while the other half was due to decreased working hours (including employees who are employed but are not working).

It also discovered that there was significant regional variation: employment losses were highest in the Americas, both as a percentage of the working-age population and in relation to working-hour losses, and lowest in Europe and Central Asia, where reduced working hours have been widely supported by job retention schemes.

Despite the adjustment via shorter working hours, the ILO anticipates that job losses in 2020 would be enormous, with 114 million jobs lost compared to pre-crisis employment levels in 2019.

However, compared to a "no-pandemic" scenario, this estimate may understate the true magnitude of work losses: a model-based scenario study estimates that worldwide employment drop might have impacted as many as 144 million jobs (ILO, 2021).

In contrast to the Great Recession of 2008–2009, the COVID-19-related job losses mostly resulted in increased inactivity rather than increased unemployment rates: of the 81 million job losses, 81 million individuals moved into economic inactivity, while 33 million were jobless.

As a consequence, in 2020, the worldwide labor participation rate fell by 2.2 percentage points (compared with a just 0.2 percent points decline between 2008 and 2009).

Only high-income nations saw a bigger rise in unemployment than inactivity (driven largely by labour market adjustment in the United States).

Workers' earnings were significantly reduced as a result of the enormous cutbacks in working hours.

According to the ILO, labor income will fall by 8.3 percent in 2020 compared to 2019.

Lower-middle income nations suffered the biggest loss in labor income, amounting to 12.3 percent.

While average labor income losses were comparable in low-, middle-, and high-income nations, these averages mask significant differences between and within these country groups.

When broken down by geographic location, employees in the Americas lost an estimated 10.3 percent of their labor income, while workers in Asia and the Pacific lost 6.6 percent.

Overall, worldwide labor income fell by around US$3.7 trillion in nominal terms (using 2019 market exchange rates) in 2020, equating to 4.4 percent of global GDP in 2019. (ILO, 2021).

The pandemic's impact on labor income reveals significant disparities amongst categories of employees (Murshed, 2021).

In general, lower- and middle-skilled employees were hit more by job and income losses than higher-skilled individuals.

This is due in part to the fact that teleworking was more commonly a possibility for such people, while social distancing measures made it difficult to do many lower-skilled occupations.

Labor income losses plunged many people into poverty (causing them to limit spending on essentials after savings were depleted) and prolonged the recession due to demand fallout when the ability to improve social safety nets is insufficient.

The following part delves more into the effects of poverty and consumption.

Effects of Poverty and Food Consumption.

COVID-19's poverty effect must be assessed carefully.

This is true not just because the crisis is still developing and knowledge about its specific socioeconomic repercussions is limited, but also because the routes of influence are many and internationally interwoven.

Several widely cited analyses have used simplistic approaches to calculating the projected impact of the global recession on average per capita incomes to estimate poverty impacts, based on household survey data available through the World Bank's PovcalNet website (see, for example, Mahler et al., 2020 and World Bank, 2020a, 2020b; and Sumner et al., 2020).

This method has a key flaw in that it implies that the crisis had no effect on within-country income distribution and, as a result, that employees from all sectors and types of activity were equally impacted.

According to Laborde et al. (2021), this assumption fails to account for the complexity of the effect pathways and may significantly underestimate the pandemic's effects.

They replicate the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on poverty and food security using a global general equilibrium model coupled to country-specific family models, taking into account all main transmission routes, including the labor market impacts.

Apart from the disease's direct effects on workers' ability to work, income losses result from people's desire to avoid contracting the disease and their altruistic concerns about infecting others, as well as policy responses aimed at reducing the negative externalities associated with an uncontrolled pandemic.

Many of the resulting changes in behavior and economic functioning are still unknown, and it's difficult to draw on prior experience since no events on the size of the COVID-19 pandemic have ever happened in today's globalized society.

As a result, Laborde et al. (2021) had to make a number of assumptions regarding economic actors' reactions to this unique circumstance.

Domestic supply disruptions, global market disruptions, household behavioral reactions, and policy responses are the four drivers of COVID-19 consequences, according to the researchers.

Laborde et al. (2021) project a 7% decline in global GDP in 2020 (compared to a scenario without COVID-19), and they show that developing countries are being disproportionately harmed by declines in trade and remittance incomes, as well as business disruptions caused by social distancing measures, in a scenario with assumptions based on evidence available by September 2020.

Without significant social and economic mitigation measures, such as a fiscal stimulus and expansion of social safety nets in the global South (scenario assumption), the impact on extreme poverty (as measured by the PPP$1.90 per person per day international poverty line) is devastating.

In the absence of COVID-19, the number of poor rises by 20% (almost 150 million people), disproportionately impacting urban and rural populations in South Asia, where 72.5 million additional individuals will enter the ranks of the poor (equivalent to a 27 percent increase in that region).

The rise in poverty in rural regions is predicted to be lower than in urban areas, partly due to the disease's lower rate of transmission and partly due to the robustness of food demand and supply compared to many other, more susceptible sectors.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, the number of impoverished people is expected to rise by 15%, or 50.5 million people.

When the poverty effect is decomposed, the predicted rise in the number of poor by 150 million is much larger (i.e., around 50 million more) than when the World Bank and UNU-WIDER studies assume a uniform decline in average per capita incomes in each nation.

It implies that COVID-19 must have exacerbated intra-country economic disparities significantly.

The recession's income and price shifts, as well as supply disruptions induced by the pandemic, are likely to have resulted in significant changes in food consumption habits, with negative nutritional effects.

According to Laborde et al. (2021), this will lead to a shift in demand away from nutrient-dense foods like fruits and vegetables, dairy products, and meats and toward calorie-dense basic staple foods like rice, maize, and other basic grains, raising concerns about dietary quality and a likely increase in micronutrient deficiency.

In both established and developing areas, the dietary change is (on average) comparable.

~ Jai Krishna Ponnappan.

You may also want to read more analysis about the COVID-19 Pandemic here.

Sources & References:

Chandrasekhar, C. P. (2021). The challenge of LDC debt. Economic and Political Weekly, 56(3).

https://www.networkideas.org/news-analysis/2021/02/the-challenge-of-ldc-debt/.

Available at: https://www.factipanel.org/explore-the-report

Gallagher, K., & Carlin F. M. (2020). The role of IMF in the fight against COVID-19: The IMF Covid Response Index. Covid Economics 42, 19 August 2020.

Gallagher, K., Gao, H., Kring, W., Ocampo, J. A., & Volz, U. (2021). Safety first: Expanding the global financial safety net in response to COVID-19. Global Policy, 12(1), 140–148.

Goolsbee, A., & Syverson, C. (2020). Fear, lockdown and diversion: Comparing drivers of pandemic economic decline 2020 (NBER Working Paper 27432). National Bureau of Economic Research.

Haan, R. (1971). Special drawing rights and development. Stenfert Kroese.

Herman, B., Ocampo, J. A., & Spiegel, S. (2010). Overcoming developing country debt crises. Oxford University Press.

IMF. (2021a). World Economic Outlook, January 2021. International Monetary Fund. Available at:

https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/Issues/2021/01/26/2021-world-economic-outlook-update.

the-pandemic-and-the-economic-crisis-a-global-agenda-for-urgent-action.

Laborde, D., Martin, W., & Vos, R. (2020). Impacts of COVID-19 on global poverty, food security and diets (IFPRI Discussion Paper 01993 December). International Food Policy Research Institute.

Laborde, D., Martin, W., & Vos, R. (2021). Impacts of COVID-19 on global poverty, food security and diets. Agricultural Economics, 52(3), 375–390. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.12624.

Mahler, D., Lakner, C, Castaneda Aguilar, R., & Wu, H. (2020). The impact of COVID-19 (Coronavirus) on global poverty: Why Sub-Saharan Africa might be the region hardest hit?

World Bank Data Blog. Available at: https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/updated-estimates impact-covid-19-global-poverty.

Mukhtarov, M., Papyrakis, E., & Rieger, M. (2021). Covid-19 and water. In E. Papyrakis (Ed.), Covid-19 and international development. Springer.

Murshed, S. M. (2021). Consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic for economic inequality. In E. Papyrakis (Ed.), Covid-19 and international development. Springer.

Oxfam. (2021a). The inequality virus (Oxfam Briefing paper (January)). Oxfam. Available at

https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621149/bp-the-inequality virus-250121-en.pdf.

Van Bergeijk, P. (2021). Pandemic economics. Edward Elgar Publishers.

Poverty and shared prosperity 2020: Reversals of fortune. The World Bank.

Available at: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/34496.

World Bank. (2020b). Global economic prospects 2020. The World Bank. Available at: https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/global-economic-prospects.