Covid

  The outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020 led governments around the world to adopt an extraordinary set of Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs), including lockdowns, school closures, limits on mobility, and border restrictions. These measures were unprecedented in scale and intrusiveness, and they were implemented despite limited knowledge about their real effects. Existing pandemic preparedness plans […]

  In the post-pandemic era, governments around the world are again struggling with high debt loads and persistent annual deficits in a kind of twisted homage to the post-2008 fiscal crises. As history stumbles toward repeating itself, the period following the global financial crisis can be instructive for policymakers grappling with new budgetary realities. Responding […]

  When consumer price inflation first reared its ugly head in the aftermath of the Covid-19 crisis, the initial reaction of central bankers and politicians was to dismiss it, along with anyone expressing concern over it. As Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell put it, consumer price increases were merely “transitory” and nothing to be too […]