The Post-COVID-19 Future: State Capability in Ensuring Shared Prosperity

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has caused profound upheavals in national communities, from humanitarian disasters to unprecedented economic downturns. All the consequences of COVID-19 have made it necessary to understand the reasons for state inefficiency and its traditional functions of ensuring economic balance and financial stability in the period before COVID-19. In fact, inefficiency is a fundamental problem of modern socioeconomic systems. Only a violation of societal integrity can explain why economic isolation and social distancing managed to instantly destroy economic structures, cause a loss in confidence in governments by citizens and increase the potential for protest against the extraordinary actions of nation-states in the fight against COVID-19. At the end of 2020, there was universal agreement about a fundamentally uncertain post-COVID-19 reality. Many progressive specialists have expressed the opinion that the degree of future socioeconomic progress directly depends on the abilities of policymakers to prioritise societal integrity in solving economic problems and achieving the goal of shared prosperity in the future

COVID-19 in Pakistan: How to Spark the Economic Recovery-Analysis from Previous Natural Disasters

COVID-19 is reshaping the future of the globe by having an unprecedented impact on people's social, political, and economic lives. This pandemic is being characterized by health crisis as well as economic crisis. Pertaining to the negative demand & supply shocks and the decrease in revenues, profits, and investment due to COVID-19, many business and economic institutions are paying heed to subdue the post-pandemic economic recession. The COVID-19 pandemic crisis also hit the economy of Pakistan rigorously. Due to persistent lockdown and de-escalated economic activities, the country faced a sharp decline in tax revenues, investment, and business growth. Pakistan has faced several economic downturns due to natural disasters: particularly the flood in 2010 and the earthquake in 2005, as they caused the loss of numerous lives, infrastructure, businesses, and irrigation land. The present study reviews the response and effectiveness of government and different institutions in previous natural disasters. This analysis provides policy recommendations to deal with the current crisis. The study concludes that Pakistan failed to get the full output of its recovery plans due to lack of preparedness & coordination, lack of understanding, insufficient knowledge & planning, the ineffective role of central management, and other institutional or management issues. It further recommends that Pakistan should act more effectively against natural disasters and restore its previous economic pace by eliminating the gaps in its economic and disaster management policies.

Measuring the Indonesian SMEs’ Capabilities for Sociodynamic and Disruptive Innovation: The Case for Gaining Resilience and Sustainability

This study investigates: (1) How do the Indonesian SMEs posit sociodynamic factors and disruptive innovation to gain resilience and sustainability? (2) How do they behave when employing sociodynamic factors and disruptive innovation? (3) Why do they formulate strategic policies for the sociodynamic factors and then innovate disruptively? This research infers that those SMEs posit sociodynamic factors to increase their businesses’ capacity by expanding their social networks and building synergy and business alliances with others. These SMEs intensively catch information about future probable economic benefits to their internal businesses. Moreover, they encourage themselves to carry out disruptive innovations that create distinctive products and new market segments. The authors designed this research method with a qualitative approach. There are three methods of data collection: in-depth interviews, observations, and document studies. Furthermore, this research selects informants from Indonesian SMEs using purposive criteria, such as their total assets or having a net income above USD 1 million (IDR 14 billion), with no restrictions on their field of business. Thus, this study firstly raises reasons why Indonesian SMEs have overcome economic downturns using sociodynamic factors and disruptive innovation. Second, the researcher shows that the Indonesian Ministry of SMEs issued policies with a fallacy, focusing on the digital economy only. Otherwise, this ministry should encourage SMEs to have a bundled knowledge of sociodynamics and disruptive innovation. Third, this study contradicts the evidence from the barriers to the Indonesian SMEs’ capability enhancements in digital transformation. Otherwise, this study evidenced that most Indonesian SMEs adopt low-single-platform information.

Stature, Poverty, and Inequality in 19th- and 20th-Century Mexico

Anthropometric studies have shown that the evolution of human stature can be helpful to examine human welfare. Adult stature is an indicator of health status and living standards for periods in which there has not been a systematic collection of data of other indicators, such as the price of goods and wages, as is the case in Mexico prior to 1950. Mexican anthropometric history studies have revealed that stature is a good measure to examine the evolution of living standards in the long run and that it has been effective for assessing poverty and inequality. These studies have shown that, for the period 1850–1950, the evolution of living standards was heterogeneous. There were different trajectories depending on the socioeconomic status. People from working-class backgrounds experienced a deterioration and/or stagnation, while people from upper-class backgrounds experienced a sustained increase in average stature. These trends challenged the official history of the post-revolutionary period, which argued that the living standards of the Mexican population deteriorated during the Porfirio Díaz administration (1876–1911) and improved afterwards with the promulgation of social legislation in the post-revolutionary era (post-1910). Additional studies show that, during the post-1950 period, there was a generalized improvement in stature, but it was limited by the challenges of economic downturns and persistent structural inequality.

The Inequitable Effects of Teacher Layoffs: What We Know and Can Do

Economic downturns can cause major funding shortfalls for U.S. public schools, often forcing districts to make difficult budget cuts, including teacher layoffs. In this brief, we synthesize the empirical literature on the widespread teacher layoffs caused by the Great Recession. Studies find that teacher layoffs harmed student achievement and were inequitably distributed across schools, teachers, and students. Research suggests that specific elements of the layoff process can exacerbate these negative effects. Seniority-based policies disproportionately concentrate layoffs among teachers of color who are more likely to be early career teachers. These “last-in first-out” policies also disproportionately affect disadvantaged students because these students are more likely to be taught by early career teachers. The common practice of widely distributing pink slips warning about a potential job loss also appears to increase teacher churn and negatively impacts teacher performance. Drawing on this evidence, we outline a set of policy recommendations to minimize the need for teacher layoffs during economic downturns and ensure that the burden of any unavoidable job cuts does not continue to be borne by students of color and students from low-income backgrounds.

Higher education decisions and macroeconomic conditions at age eighteen

Using individual data from PIAAC and data on youth unemployment for 18 countries, we test how macroeconomic conditions experienced at age eighteen affect the following decisions in post-secondary and tertiary education: (i) enrollment (ii) dropping-out, (iii) type of degree completed, (iv) area of specialization, and (v) time-to-degree. We also analyze how the effects vary by gender and parental background. Our findings differ across geographies (Anglo-Saxon, Southern European, Western European, and Scandinavian countries), which shows that the impacts of macroeconomic conditions on higher education decisions depend on context, such as labor markets and education systems. By analyzing various components of higher education together, we are able to obtain a clearer picture of how during economic downturns potential mechanisms interact to determine higher education decisions.

Economic Cycle and Bank Liquidity Hoarding: Are They Procyclical or Countercyclical?

The paper empirically examines bank liquidity hoarding fluctuations over the economic cycle and provides further evidence on the heterogeneous cyclicality of bank liquidity hoarding across different banks in Vietnam for the period 2007–2019. Using both static panel models with the fixed-effects regression using corrected Driscoll-Kraay standard errors and dynamic panel models with the two-step system generalized method of moments estimator, we find that the liquidity hoarding of banks is procyclical. Concretely bank liquidity hoarding on- and off-balance sheets tends to increase during economic upturns and decrease during economic downturns. Our additional analysis yields a consistent pattern that financially weaker banks are more procyclical than their stronger counterparts. During booms and busts, the behaviour of hoarding liquidity is more pronounced for banks with smaller sizes, less capital, more risk, and less profit. This heterogeneity also contributes to understanding the core mechanism behind our main findings, further confirming the precautionary motive of bank liquidity hoarding.

Covid-19 and the issue of gender equality

It is now clear that the COVID-19 pandemic is not only a global health emergency, but is also leading to a severe downturn in the global economy. In this study, we analyze how this economic downturn will affect women and men differently, and what the main long-term consequences for gender equality may be. This study begins by providing evidence that the effects of the current crisis on women and men are likely to be very different from those of other economic downturns. In recent recessions, such as the economic crisis of 2008, job losses for men have been much higher than for women. One reason was that relatively more men work in industries that are strongly affected by the “standard” downturn (such as manufacturing and construction), while women's employment is concentrated in less cyclical sectors such as health and education. In contrast, the current crisis is having a major impact on high-employment services, such as restaurants and hospitality. During the pandemic, most countries around the world decided to close schools and kindergartens. This has dramatically increased the need for child care. In addition, childcare provided by grandparents is currently not recommended due to higher mortality rates among the elderly, and due to social distancing measures, sharing childcare with neighbors and friends is also very limited. Thus, most families have no choice but to take care of their children on their own. Due to the existing division of responsibilities for child care in most families, mothers suffer more than parents. Single mothers, many of whom are both in Ukraine and abroad, and who often find themselves in a difficult economic situation, are hit hardest.

Regional Government Revenue Forecasting: Risk Factors of Investment Financing

Accurate revenue prediction is a key factor for the reliable determination of the investment part of entire regional and local budgets, particularly during economic downturns and fiscal uncertainty. An unexpected decline in revenue requires the reduction in capital expenditures and forces the regional government to find additional sources to close the budget gaps. Current studies indicate that budget forecasts often underpredict revenue and use the available information inefficiently. In this article, the authors examine chosen methods of forecasting regional government revenue. In addition to classical forecasting models based on time series and causal models, an original structural forecasting procedure was proposed, which is effective especially in case of data delay. The reliability of applied methods was assessed using data from the Polish area of Zachodniopomorskie over the period 2000–2018. The found evidence supported results that were obtained by many other researchers, which indicated that less comprehensive methods of forecasting can provide reasonably accurate estimates.