Journal Article
The gendered crisis
THIS ARTICLE IS ON EARLY VIEW | This article studies the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the gendered dimensions of employment and mental health among urban informal-sector workers in Delhi, India. First, the study finds that men’s employment...
Journal Article
The labour market impact of COVID-19 lockdowns
In this study, we provide causal evidence of the immediate and near-term impact of stringent COVID-19 lockdown policies on employment outcomes, using Ghana as a case study. We take advantage of a specific policy setting, in which strict stay-at-home...
Working Paper
Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on employment
This paper provides a comparative summary of recent national statistics from five Latin American countries on employment losses and gains during the peak COVID-19 years compared with pre-pandemic levels. As part of its work on the impact of the...
Working Paper
Rebel governance during COVID-19
As COVID-19 spread worldwide, armed groups in control of territory were called to address the health emergency. However, our knowledge in this regard is limited. Specifically, it remains poorly understood why different armed groups responded to the...
Working Paper
The role of tax–benefit systems in protecting household incomes in Latin America during the COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic drastically affected household incomes around the world. In developed economies, pre-pandemic tax–benefit policies and emergency transfers mitigated to a large extent the negative income shock. However, less is known about the...
Journal Article
COVID-19 and the state
During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was wealthier countries with stronger institutions that suffered the highest numbers of cases and fatalities. Many weaker countries were instead praised for more effective pandemic response. What...
Working Paper
The impact of COVID-19 on urban informal workers in Maputo
Informal self-employed traders in developing countries are vulnerable to shocks as they often lack access to social insurance or formal finance. This study investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on these urban traders in the capital of...
Working Paper
Peruvian response to COVID-19 pandemic
Why does a state like Peru, dedicated to fulfilling development goals and sustained good macroeconomic performance, appear incapable of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic? Using the case of maternal mortality, this paper argues that the tremendous...
Working Paper
How have formal firms recovered from the pandemic?
This paper examines how formal firms have been impacted by and recovered from the pandemic by drawing on two distinct but complementary data sources. This is the first attempt to use both survey and tax administrative data to measure the initial...
Working Paper
Social distress and (some) relief
Up-to-date, nationally representative household income/expenditure data are crucial to estimating poverty during the COVID-19 pandemic and to policy-making more broadly, but South Africa lacks such data. We present new pandemic poverty estimates...
Working Paper
Physical proximity and occupational employment change by gender during the COVID-19 pandemic
Previous economic downturns such as the 2008–09 Global Financial Crisis disproportionately affected male employment due to greater contractions in industries typically filled by men (e.g., manufacturing). However, after the imposition of the ‘hard’...
Working Paper
The pandemic and the state
COVID-19 has brought to the fore the issue of state preparedness in mitigating health emergencies. This paper problematizes the received wisdom of greater state capacity in mitigating the severity of the pandemic. Based on a case study of West Bengal...
Working Paper
The uneven path to recovery
COVID-19 cases were first confirmed in March 2020 in Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa. These countries put in place several stringent measures, including lockdowns, to contain the spread of the virus. Various policies were also rolled out to address...
Working Paper
Tax–benefit responses in Uruguay during the COVID-19 pandemic
We analyse the social protection policy response to COVID-19 and its impact on household incomes in Uruguay during 2020 and 2021, based on static microsimulation methods. From the onset of the crisis, the Uruguayan government implemented adjustments...
Working Paper
Armed group opportunism in the face of recent crises
Terrorist and other types of armed groups often exploit natural and human-made disasters and emergencies to advance their causes. This paper studies how some armed groups have responded to two recent global emergencies—climate change and the COVID-19...