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Middle East and Central Asia > Qatar

You are looking at 1 - 10 of 28 items for :

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Cover IMF Working Papers
The Green Future: Labor Market Implications for Men and Women
Naomi-Rose Alexander
,
Longji Li
,
Jorge Mondragon
,
Sahar Priano
, and
Marina Mendes Tavares
This study examines the green transition's effects on labor markets using a task-based framework to identify jobs with tasks that contribute, or with the potential to contribute, to the green transition. Analyzing data from Brazil, Colombia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States, we find that the proportion of workers in green jobs is similar across AEs and EMs, albeit with distinct occupational patterns: AE green job holders typically have higher education levels, whereas in EMs, they tend to have lower education levels. Despite these disparities, the distribution of green jobs across genders is similar across countries, with men occupying over two-thirds of these positions. Furthermore, green jobs are characterized by a wage premium and a narrower gender pay gap. Our research further studies the implications of AI for the expansion of green employment opportunities. This research advances our understanding of the interplay between green jobs, gender equity, and AI and provides valuable insights for promoting a more inclusive green transition.
Keywords:
Labor Market Transition; Climate Change; Employment; narrower gender pay gap; wage premium; job holder; employment share; Gender inequality; Artificial intelligence; Women; Global
Cover Policy Papers
Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust: 2024 Borrowing Agreements with Belgium, Denmark, France, Japan, Korea, And Qatar
International Monetary Fund. Finance Dept.
and
International Monetary Fund. Legal Dept.
This paper presents the last six borrowing agreements that were concluded between October 2023 and February 2024 to provide new loan resources to the Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust (PRGT) as part of the loan mobilization round launched in July 2021 to support low-income countries (LICs) during the pandemic and beyond. Five of the six agreements use SDRs in the context of SDR channeling. Together these borrowing agreements provide a total amount of SDR 3.9 billion in new PRGT loan resources. The 2021 loan fundraising campaign was concluded successfully. It mobilized total contributions of SDR 14.65 billion from 17 PRGT lenders, well exceeding the SDR 12.6 billion loan target.
Keywords:
transparency policy; PRGT loan disbursement; loan resource; SDR interest rate assumption; loan pledge; Loans; Poverty reduction and development; SDR interest rate
Cover IMF Working Papers
Harnessing Satellite Data to Improve Social Assistance Targeting in the Eastern Caribbean
Sophia Chen
,
Ryu Matsuura
,
Flavien Moreau
, and
Joana Pereira
Prioritizing populations most in need of social assistance is an important policy decision. In the Eastern Caribbean, social assistance targeting is constrained by limited data and the need for rapid support in times of large economic and natural disaster shocks. We leverage recent advances in machine learning and satellite imagery processing to propose an implementable strategy in the face of these constraints. We show that local well-being can be predicted with high accuracy in the Eastern Caribbean region using satellite data and that such predictions can be used to improve targeting by reducing aggregation bias, better allocating resources across areas, and proxying for information difficult to verify.
Keywords:
Social assistance targeting; satellite data; machine learning; Eastern Caribbean; Small Island Developing States.; aggregation bias; hard-to-verify information; satellite imagery processing; Income; Natural disasters; Caribbean
Cover Selected Issues Papers
From HydroCarbon to Hightech: Mapping the Economic Transformation of Qatar
Chandana Kularatne
,
Ken Miyajima
, and
Dirk V Muir
Qatar’s state-led, hydrocarbon intensive growth model has delivered rapid growth and substantial improvements in living standards over the past several decades. Guided by the National Vision 2030, an economic transformation is underway toward a more dynamic, diversified, knowledge-based, sustainable, and private sector-led growth model. As Qatar is finalizing its Third National Development Strategy to make the final leap toward Vision 2030, this paper aims to identify key structural reforms needed, quantify their potential impact on the economy, and shed light on the design of a comprehensive reform agenda ahead. The paper finds that labor market reforms could bring substantial benefits, particularly reforms related to increasing the share of skilled foreign workers. Certain reforms to further improve the business environment, such as improving access to finance, could also have large growth impact. A comprehensive, well-integrated, and properly sequenced reform package to exploit complementarities across reforms could boost Qatar’s potential growth significantly.
Keywords:
Economic diversification; economic transformation; Qatar; structural reform; sequenced reform package; growth model; growth impact; Qatari small and medium-sized enterprises; emission reduction target; private sector development; Labor market reforms; Labor force participation; Women; Climate finance; Global
Cover IMF Staff Country Reports
Qatar: Selected Issues
International Monetary Fund. Middle East and Central Asia Dept.
This Selected Issues paper aims to identify key reforms to accelerate Qatar’s economic transformation, estimate their impact, and shed light on the design of a comprehensive reform agenda. This paper starts by taking stock of Qatar’s progress in key reforms so far, identifying areas for further improvement, proposing structural reform measures, estimating the impact of key proposed reforms, and providing principles on the prioritization and sequencing of reforms. Qatar’s state-led, hydrocarbon intensive growth model has delivered rapid growth and substantial improvements in living standards over the past several decades. Guided by the National Vision 2030, an economic transformation is underway toward a more dynamic, diversified, knowledge-based, sustainable, and private sector-led growth model. The paper finds that labor market reforms could bring substantial benefits, particularly reforms related to increasing the share of skilled foreign workers. Certain reforms to further improve the business environment, such as improving access to finance, could also have large growth impact. A comprehensive, well-integrated, and properly sequenced reform package to exploit complementarities across reforms could boost Qatar’s potential growth significantly.
Keywords:
FIFA World cup; International Monetary Fund Washington, d.c; World Cup contribution; labor market dynamics; key reform; Labor market reforms; Labor force participation; Women; Climate finance; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
Labor Market Exposure to AI: Cross-country Differences and Distributional Implications
Carlo Pizzinelli
,
Augustus J Panton
,
Ms. Marina Mendes Tavares
,
Mauro Cazzaniga
, and
Longji Li
This paper examines the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on labor markets in both Advanced Economies (AEs) and Emerging Markets (EMs). We propose an extension to a standard measure of AI exposure, accounting for AI's potential as either a complement or a substitute for labor, where complementarity reflects lower risks of job displacement. We analyze worker-level microdata from 2 AEs (US and UK) and 4 EMs (Brazil, Colombia, India, and South Africa), revealing substantial variations in unadjusted AI exposure across countries. AEs face higher exposure than EMs due to a higher employment share in professional and managerial occupations. However, when accounting for potential complementarity, differences in exposure across countries are more muted. Within countries, common patterns emerge in AEs and EMs. Women and highly educated workers face greater occupational exposure to AI, at both high and low complementarity. Workers in the upper tail of the earnings distribution are more likely to be in occupations with high exposure but also high potential complementarity.
Keywords:
Artificial intelligence; Employment; Occupations; Emerging Markets; impact of artificial intelligence; exposure to AI; labor market exposure; employment share; educated worker; Labor markets
Cover IMF Working Papers
Reported Social Unrest Index: August 2023 Update
Mr. Philip Barrett
and
Euihyun Bae
This paper is the second update of the Reported Social Unrest Index (Barrett et al. 2022), outlining developments in global social unrest since March 2022. It shows that the fraction of countries experiencing major social unrest events has been stable. Reasons for social unrest can be broadly categorized as stemming from sdebate over constitutional issues, protests connected to specific policies, and other generalized disorder.
Keywords:
attempts to proxy; fraction of country; copyright page; update of the Reported Social Unrest Index; IMF surveillance; Pension spending; Machine learning; Pension reform; Stock markets; COVID-19; Global
Cover IMF Staff Country Reports
Qatar: 2022 Article IV Consultation-Press Release; and Staff Report
International Monetary Fund. Middle East and Central Asia Dept.
Swift and decisive policy response to the Covid-19 pandemic has helped to mitigate the health and economic impact of the crisis. Fast vaccination rollout has also strengthened the economy’s resilience to new pandemic waves, paving the way for a speedy recovery. As the economy rebounds, a gradual exit from pandemic support measures is underway.
Keywords:
hydrocarbon price; CPI data; money market rate; financial asset; headline inflation; IMF's transparency policy; COVID-19; External sector statistics; Foreign assets; Global; Middle East; North Africa; East Africa
Cover IMF Working Papers
Overcoming Data Sparsity: A Machine Learning Approach to Track the Real-Time Impact of COVID-19 in Sub-Saharan Africa
Karim Barhoumi
,
Seung Mo Choi
,
Tara Iyer
,
Jiakun Li
,
Franck Ouattara
,
Mr. Andrew J Tiffin
, and
Jiaxiong Yao
The COVID-19 crisis has had a tremendous economic impact for all countries. Yet, assessing the full impact of the crisis has been frequently hampered by the delayed publication of official GDP statistics in several emerging market and developing economies. This paper outlines a machine-learning framework that helps track economic activity in real time for these economies. As illustrative examples, the framework is applied to selected sub-Saharan African economies. The framework is able to provide timely information on economic activity more swiftly than official statistics.
Keywords:
Sub-Saharan Africa; Economic Activity; GDP; Machine Learning; Nowcasting; COVID-19; machine learning approach; data sparsity; GDP statistics; crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa; learning framework; Oil prices; Real effective exchange rates; Africa; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
Nowcasting GDP - A Scalable Approach Using DFM, Machine Learning and Novel Data, Applied to European Economies
Mr. Jean-Francois Dauphin
,
Mr. Kamil Dybczak
,
Morgan Maneely
,
Marzie Taheri Sanjani
,
Mrs. Nujin Suphaphiphat
,
Yifei Wang
, and
Hanqi Zhang
This paper describes recent work to strengthen nowcasting capacity at the IMF’s European department. It motivates and compiles datasets of standard and nontraditional variables, such as Google search and air quality. It applies standard dynamic factor models (DFMs) and several machine learning (ML) algorithms to nowcast GDP growth across a heterogenous group of European economies during normal and crisis times. Most of our methods significantly outperform the AR(1) benchmark model. Our DFMs tend to perform better during normal times while many of the ML methods we used performed strongly at identifying turning points. Our approach is easily applicable to other countries, subject to data availability.
Keywords:
Nowcasting; Factor Model; Machine Learning; Large Data Sets; machine learning algorithm; novel data; approach Using DFM; support vector Machine; data availability; Machine learning; COVID-19; Business cycles; Factor models; Global; Caribbean; Europe