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Middle East and Central Asia > Jordan

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Cover IMF Working Papers
Digitalization and Resilience: Firm-level Evidence During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Nordine Abidi
,
Mehdi El Herradi
, and
Sahra Sakha
The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in an unprecedented shock to firms with adverse consequences for existing productive capacities. At the same time, digitalization has increasingly been touted as a key pathway for mitigating economic losses from the pandemic, and we expect firms facing digital constraints to be less resilient to supply shocks. This paper uses firm-level data to investigate whether digitally-enabled firms have been able to mitigate economic losses arising from the pandemic better than digitally-constrained firms in the Middle East and Central Asia region using a difference-in-differences approach. Controlling for demand conditions, we find that digitally-enabled firms faced a lower decline in sales by about 4 percentage points during the pandemic compared to digitally-constrained firms, suggesting that digitalization acted as a hedge during the pandemic. Against this backdrop, our results suggest that policymakers need to close the digital gap and accelerate firms’ digital transformation. This will be essential for economies to bounce back from the pandemic, and build the foundations for future resilience.
Keywords:
COVID-19; digitalization; technology adoption; economic resilience; Middle East and Central Asia; digitally-enabled firm; digitally-constrained firm; firms in the Middle East; firm-level data; digital transformation; Digitalization; Financial inclusion; Foreign corporations; Asia and Pacific; Africa; Middle East; North Africa
Cover IMF Working Papers
Gender Equality and Inclusive Growth
Asel Isakova
and
Francesco Luna
This paper considers various dimensions and sources of gender inequality and presents policies and best practices to address these. With women accounting for fifty percent of the global population, inclusive growth can only be achieved if it promotes gender equality. Despite recent progress, gender gaps remain across all stages of life, including before birth, and negatively impact health, education, and economic outcomes for women. The roadmap to gender equality has to rely on legal framework reforms, policies to promote equal access, and efforts to tackle entrenched social norms. These need to be set in the context of arising new trends such as digitalization, climate change, as well as shocks such as pandemics.
Keywords:
gender gap; inequality; wage gap; wage segregation; gender discrimination; active labor market policies; gender budgeting; GGGI: Global Gender Gap Index; inclusive growth; WP; fiscal policy; parental leave; justice system; gender earnings gap; age-employment profile; commonwealth country; earnings gap; job portal; Women; Gender inequality; Global; South Asia; Sub-Saharan Africa; West Africa; Central Asia