Today, “mobile money” – a service enabling people to send, receive, and store money on a cellphone – allows a market trader in Kenya to borrow a modest amount at sunrise to buy her stock, and then pay ...More
EJ Insight2020-05-25
The new Franco-German proposal for a €500 billion ($547 billion) European recovery fund could turn out to be the most important historic consequence of the coronavirus. It is even conceivable that the ...More
EJ Insight2020-05-22
Last month, Sheuly rushed into a Dhaka hospital in need of emergency treatment. The 25-year-old Bangladeshi woman had just given birth at home – thinking it a safer setting than the hospital during a ...More
EJ Insight2020-05-22
In addition to its health and human toll, the COVID-19 pandemic is threatening to reverse much of the progress that developing countries have made in reducing poverty over the last 20 years. Substanti ...More
EJ Insight2020-05-21
Nothing highlights the importance of reliable news quite like a crisis. And yet, as the COVID-19 pandemic puts journalists under intensifying pressure to deliver that news, it is also upending their i ...More
EJ Insight2020-05-15
The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the fragility of the world order. Governments have sought to limit the spread of the virus through lockdowns and travel restrictions, which have stalled economies a ...More
EJ Insight2020-05-13
The COVID-19 crisis has brought economies around the world to a standstill. Huge swaths of manufacturing have been idled, and sectors such as aviation and tourism are largely shuttered. Amid all the e ...More
EJ Insight2020-05-08
Most international trade and investment occurs in networks which divide production into discrete steps that can be carried out in different countries. Firms exchange inputs and outputs in cross-border ...More
EJ Insight2020-05-06
The blame game has begun. The number of COVID-19 victims is still unknown, but there is a stream of hate and misinformation pervading timelines. The damage of disinformation and the virus itself to fa ...More
EJ Insight2020-05-05
The COVID-19 pandemic has hit EU member states hard, and will continue to confront the bloc with significant economic challenges. Yet, from a macroeconomic perspective, Europe’s policy response so far ...More
EJ Insight2020-04-28
Although the COVID-19 pandemic feels unprecedented, it is not the first time that exogenous forces have radically disrupted civilian life. The most common parallel is to the American mobilization for ...More
EJ Insight2020-04-24
The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the greatest global challenges in generations. Governments and monetary authorities are correctly using every policy lever at their disposal to prevent a grave public-h ...More
EJ Insight2020-04-22
Our cities will not be the same after COVID-19. Nor should they be. In Italy, as elsewhere, the public-health crisis has put us on the defensive. Our hospitals have been inadequate. And our cities, ha ...More
EJ Insight2020-04-17
Declining coronavirus infection rates and plans to begin easing lockdown measures in some parts of the developed world have provided a ray of hope after weeks of unrelenting gloom. But, for many devel ...More
EJ Insight2020-04-16
Last week, the Eurogroup of eurozone finance ministers, having acknowledged that nobody is to blame for the COVID-19 crisis, agreed to a deal to mitigate its economic fallout. The agreement includes € ...More
EJ Insight2020-04-16
US President Donald Trump tells us that once COVID-19 is contained and it is safe to go back to work, the economy will be “great again.” Is he right? There is at least one reason to think he is. After ...More
EJ Insight2020-04-15
As the COVID-19 pandemic forces countries to close their borders, their agricultural sectors are confronting major challenges. Even in countries that are unlikely to face food insecurity – such as tho ...More
EJ Insight2020-04-15
Despite a deep recession in 2008 and a slow recovery thereafter, the first two decades of the twenty-first century were generally a time of economic progress in most advanced economies. Real (inflatio ...More
EJ Insight2020-04-09
With each passing day, the 2008 global financial crisis increasingly looks like a mere dry run for today’s economic catastrophe. The short-term collapse in global output now underway already seems lik ...More
EJ Insight2020-04-08
