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Tackling the Global Food Crisis
Russia’s war in Ukraine has exacerbated food insecurity that had already been on the rise for half a decade. Low-income countries are affected the most. This note suggests that the food and fertilizer price shock would add $9 billion in 2022 and 2023 to the import bills of the 48 most affected countries. The budgetary cost of protecting vulnerable households in these countries amounts to $5–7 billion. Strong and timely action on a global scale is needed to support vulnerable households through international humanitarian assistance and domestic fiscal measures; to maintain open trade; to enhance food production and distribution; and to invest in climate-resilient agriculture. The IMF has ...
Climate Change and Chronic Food Insecurity in Sub-Saharan Africa
Climate change is intensifying food insecurity across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) with lasting adverse macroeconomic effects, especially on economic growth and poverty. Successive shocks from the war in Ukraine and COVID-19 pandemic have increased food prices and depressed incomes, raising the number of people suffering from high malnutrition and unable to meet basic food consumption needs by at least 30 percent to 123 million in 2022 or 12 percent of SSA’s population. Addressing the lack of resilience to climate change—that critically underlies food insecurity in SSA—will require careful policy prioritization against a backdrop of financing and capacity constraints. This paper presents s...
Avoiding the New Mediocre
Raising the Middle East and Central Asia’s long-term growth prospects is critical for meeting the region's pressing need for jobs and higher living standards.
Sub-Saharan Africa: Building Resilience to Climate-Related Disasters
This paper assesses the impact of climate-related disasters on medium-term growth and analyzes key structural areas that could substantially improve disaster-resilience. Results show that (i) climaterelated disasters have a significant negative impact on medium-term growth, especially for sub-Saharan Africa; and (ii) a disaster’s intensity matters much more than its frequency, given the non-linear cumulative effects of disasters. In sub-Saharan Africa, electrification (facilitating irrigation) is found to be most effective for reducing damage from droughts while improved health care and education outcomes are critical for raising resilience to floods and storms. Better access to finance, telecommunications, and use of machines in agriculture also have a significant impact.
Creating Policy Space in Low-Income Countries during the Recent Crises
Low-income countries were hit especially hard by sharp increases in world food and fuel prices in 2007-08 and the global financial crisis that followed. In response, the International Monetary Fund scaled up its financial assistance to low-income countries and revamped its concessional lending facilities to make them more flexible in meeting the diverse needs of these countries. Creating Policy Space in Low-Income Countries during the Recent Crises assesses empirically the outcome of the IMF response, and provides insight into how IMF-supported programs in low-income countries have been adapted to the changing economic circumstances in these countries. The authors report that these programs have provided expanded policy space in the face of the global price shocks and financial crisis.
Capital Flows to EU New Member States
The recent boom-bust episode in Emerging Europe was largely the product of surges and sudden stops in capital inflows. This paper empirically argues that the sectors into which capital flows determines their impact on GDP growth. Applying data from EU New Member States, it is found that capital flows into real estate have a greater impact on swings in GDP than other sectors, irrespective of a country's exchange rate or fiscal policy. Consequently, as new waves of capital inflows spread to emerging markets, policies may usefully focus on supporting capital inflows towards economic sectors that minimize large swings in GDP.
Fair Taxation in the Middle East and North Africa
Fairness – and what governments can do about it – is at the forefront of economic and social debate all over the world. In MENA, this has been at the core of recent political transitions but has not been adequately addressed. This SDN explores how tax systems – a critical interface between the state and citizens – can play a role in meeting demands for greater economic fairness in MENA countries. The SDN finds that for countries with well-established non-hydrocarbon tax systems (mostly oil importers) reforms should focus on simplifying tax structures and introducing more progressivity of personal income taxes, broadening tax bases, and better designing and enforcing property taxes. T...
Productivity Growth and Structural Reform in Bulgaria
Labor productivity levels in Bulgaria lag well behind that in the EU, weighing on the convergence process. Stronger productivity growth would allow Bulgaria to close the income gap with the EU average more quickly and to alleviate the structural problems in its labor market, reflected in its high long–term and youth unemployment. Our analysis of the drivers of labor productivity suggest that for Bulgaria closing the gap with EU standards in the areas of institutional and infrastructure quality, goods market efficiency, higher education, and innovation would permanently boost productivity growth by a total of 1 percentage point a year. This would be enough to close the income gap with the EU average by 2040, compared to the status quo where it would take an additional 10 years.
The Driving Force behind the Boom and Bust in Construction in Europe
This paper studies the factors behind pro-cyclical but widely varying construction shares (as a percent of GDP) across countries, with a strong focus on European countries. Using a dataset covering 48 countries (including advanced and emerging economies within and outside Europe) for 1990-2011, we find that country’s geography, demographics, and economic conditions are the key determinants of a norm around which actual construction shares revolve in a simple AR(1) and error-correction process. The empirical results show that in many European countries, construction shares overshoot relative to their norms before the recent global crisis, but they have fallen significantly since the crisis. Nevertheless, there is still room for further adjustment in construction shares in some countries which may weigh on economic recovery.
Fiscal Multipliers in Ukraine
Amid renewed crisis, falling tax revenues, and rising debt, Ukraine faces serious fiscal consolidation needs. Durable fiscal adjustment can support economic confidence and rebuild buffers but what is its overall impact on growth? How effective are revenue versus spending instruments? Does current or capital spending have a larger impact? Applying a structural vector autoregressive model, this paper finds that Ukraine’s near-term revenue and spending multipliers are well below one. In the medium-term, the revenue multiplier becomes insignificant (with a wide confidence interval) and the spending multiplier strengthens. Capital and current spending have a similar effect on growth but the cap...
