Growth in Asia and the Pacific outperformed expectations in late 2023, reaching 5.0 percent for the year. Inflation has continued to decline, albeit at varying speeds: some economies are still seeing sustained price pressures, while others are facing deflationary risks.In 2024, growth is projected to slow modestly to 4.5 percent. …
Africa is severely impacted by the triple crisis of debt, climate change and nature loss. The continent’s debt now stands at more than 70% of GDP. There is potential to address these crises through ‘general purpose’ debt financing linked to climate and nature key performance indicators (KPIs). For severely indebted …
While trade exacerbates climate change, it is also a central part of the solution because it has the potential to enhance mitigation and adaptation. This timely report explores the different ways in which trade and climate change intersect. Trade contributes to the emissions that cause global warming and is itself …
This report, An Energy Sector Roadmap to Carbon Neutrality in China, responds to the Chinese government’s invitation to the IEA to co-operate on long-term strategies by setting out pathways for reaching carbon neutrality in China’s energy sector. It shows that achieving carbon neutrality fits with China’s broader development goals, such …
The world’s poorest countries will remain on the margins of the global economy if States are unable to boost economic production, and the international community fails to provide more support, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) warned. Their ability to respond to and recover from crises such as …
This paper provides a comprehensive global, regional, and country-level update of: (i) efficient fossil fuel prices to reflect supply and environmental costs; and (ii) subsidies implied by charging below efficient fuel prices. The methodology improves over previous IMF analyses through more sophisticated estimation of costs and impacts of reform. Globally, …
This publication updates the analyses presented in the original discussion paper “From Double Shock to Double Recovery – Implications and Options for Health Financing in the Time of COVID-19,” published in March 2021 (C. Kurowski, D. B. Evans, et al. 2021). The original paper used macroeconomic projections released by the …
The picture on climate change is bleak. But 30 years of international climate cooperation have had a significant impact. This has included an extraordinary global effort to clarify the science, global agreement of a stabilisation target, an international treaty basis for mitigation and adaptation action, and a wide array of …
This study provides an overview of the potential impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in The Gambian economy, identifying sectoral policies likely to yield good outcomes, and those in which structural reforms are needed to enable the country to “build back better”. The report also uses an innovative Bayesian Vector-Autoregressive (VAR) …
The study provides a critical assessment of the implications of COVID-19 pandemic on the country’s fiscal consolidation path and identify alternative policy options for mitigating the high risk of debt distress. The study customizes the Middle Income Countries Debt Sustainability Analysis (MIC DSA) model by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) …
The lifetime cost to society, the environment and the economy of plastic produced in 2019 alone has been revealed at US$3.7 trillion, more than the GDP of India according to a new report by Dalberg commissioned by WWF. Unless action is taken, these costs are set to double for the …
African countries have diversified both their exports and trade partners over the last decade, African agricultural trade still suffers from structural problems as well as exogenous shocks. Against this backdrop, the 2021 Africa Agriculture Trade Monitor (AATM) analyzes continental and regional trends in African agricultural trade flows and policies. The …
The paper analyzes the impact of natural disasters on per-capita GDP growth. Using a quantile regressions and growth-at-risk approach, the paper examines the impact of disasters and policy choices on the distribution of growth rather than simply its average. Find that countries that have in place disaster preparedness mechanisms and …
This report forecasts growth in developing Asia of 7.1% in 2021 and 5.4% in 2022 in an uneven recovery caused by divergent growth paths. Its theme chapter explores sustainable agriculture. Growth forecasts are revised up for East Asia and Central Asia from the projections made in April, but down for …
The aim of this paper is to fill the gap of rigorous evidence on the short-term variations of food (in)security in response to business cycle fluctuations and explore the role of relevant policy instruments to address jumps in food insecurity. The literature on the micro-level determinants of household food security …
Annual economic losses arising natural disasters in the Asia-Pacific region could almost double to US$ 1.344 billion equivalent to 4.2 per cent of regional GDP under the worst case climate change scenario, according to estimates in this new report released by the UNESCAP Since the incursion of COVID-19 pandemic, the …
The slow rollout of coronavirus vaccines will cost the global economy $2.3 trillion in lost output, a report found. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s study found that emerging and developing economies, whose vaccine rollouts are far behind those of wealthier countries, will bear the brunt of those losses. The report comes …
Amid the growing interest in the digitalization of socioeconomic activities, there is a lack of consensus on an established framework to estimate the digital economy. This special supplement of Key Indicators for Asia and the Pacific 2021 seeks to progress the discourse by measuring the size of the digital economy …
This report reveals how heat stress disproportionately affects specific regions, racial groups, and economic sectors across the United States, providing policymakers and investors with new, quantitative evidence on the economic and human dimensions of the challenge. Among the report’s key findings: Nearly all US counties are feeling the economic burn …
Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have long pursued unconventional economic development strategies, often with great success. Equally, because of their susceptibility to exogenous shocks, which can be disproportionately more destructive than in larger states, their progress remains fragile and can be set back suddenly and dramatically. It has taken some …
There is considerable anxiety about the international impact of unilateral action on climate change. Environmentalists are concerned that it leads to ‘carbon leakage’, that is, the migration of high-emissions activities from relatively tight regulatory environments to more lenient jurisdictions. Industry representatives worry about competitiveness, in terms of the associated loss …
