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Social Science > Demography

You are looking at 1 - 4 of 4 items for :

  • Type: Journal Issue x
  • Public Economics: General x
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Cover IMF Working Papers
Assessing Targeted Containment Policies to Fight COVID-19
Mr. Francesco Grigoli
and
José M. Mota
The large economic costs of full-blown lockdowns in response to COVID-19 outbreaks, coupled with heterogeneous mortality rates across age groups, led to question non-discriminatory containment measures. In this paper we provide an assessment of the targeted approach to containment. We propose a SIR-macro model that allows for heterogeneous agents in terms of mortality rates and contact rates, and in which the government optimally bans people from working. We find that under a targeted policy, the optimal containment reaches a larger portion of the population than under a blanket policy and is held in place for longer. Compared to a blanket policy, a targeted approach results in a smaller death count. Yet, it is not a panacea: the recession is larger under such approach as the containment policy applies to a larger fraction of people, remains in place for longer, and herd immunity is achieved later. Moreover, we find that increased interactions between low- and high-risk individuals effectively reduce the benefits of a targeted approach to containment.
Keywords:
Optimal containment policies; COVID-19; heterogeneous agents; recession; voluntary social distancing.; WP; policy scenario; containment policy; share of contact; blanket policy scenario; optimal containment; targeted policy approach
Cover IMF Working Papers
Mobility under the COVID-19 Pandemic: Asymmetric Effects across Gender and Age
Mr. Francesco Caselli
,
Mr. Francesco Grigoli
,
Mr. Damiano Sandri
, and
Mr. Antonio Spilimbergo
Lockdowns and voluntary social distancing led to significant reduction in people’s mobility. Yet, there is scant evidence on the heterogeneous effects across segments of the population. Using unique mobility indicators based on anonymized and aggregate data provided by Vodafone for Italy, Portugal, and Spain, we find that lockdowns had a larger impact on the mobility of women and younger cohorts. Younger people also experienced a sharper drop in mobility in response to rising COVID-19 infections. Our findings, which are consistent across estimation methods and robust to a variety of tests, warn about a possible widening of gender and inter-generational inequality and provide important inputs for the formulation of targeted policies.
Keywords:
lockdown; mobility; age.; WP; lockdown measure; lockdown stringency; impact of lockdown; lockdown impulse; government lockdown
Cover IMF Working Papers
Counting the Oil Money and the Elderly: Norway's Public Sector Balance Sheet
Ezequiel Cabezon
and
Christian Henn
Based on a permanent income analysis, Gagnon (2018) has prominently suggested that Norway has saved too much, thereby free-riding on the rest of the world for demand. Our public sector balance sheet analysis comes to the opposite conclusion, chiefly because it also accounts for future aging costs. Unsurprisingly, we find that Norway’s current assets exceed its liabilities by some 340 percent of mainland GDP. But its nonoil fiscal deficits have grown very large (to almost 8 percent of mainland GDP) and aging pressures are only commencing. Therefore, Norway’s intertemporal financial net worth (IFNW) is negative, at about -240 percent of mainland GDP. As IFNW represents an intertemporal budget constraint, this implies that Norway’s savings are likely insufficient to address aging costs without additional fiscal action.
Keywords:
WP; mainland GDP; oil price; GPFG asset; asset price; asset stock; Public Sector Balance Sheet; Intertemporal Fiscal Balances; Debt Sustainability; Norway; statistics Norway; Norwegian krone; Norway's intertemporal financial net worth; Intertemporal public sector balance sheet; Norway's assets; Norway's IFNW; nonfinancial assets; GPFG consist; price development; Financial statements; Oil prices; Asset prices; Aging; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
Growing Apart, Losing Trust? The Impact of Inequality on Social Capital
Eric D Gould
and
Alexander Hijzen
There is a widespread perception that trust and social capital have declined in United States as well as other advanced economies, while income inequality has tended to increase. While previous research has noted that measured trust declines as individuals become less similar to one another, this paper examines whether the downward trend in social capital is responding to the increasing gaps in income. The analysis uses data from the American National Election Survey (ANES) for the United States, and the European Social Survey (ESS) for Europe. Our analysis for the United States exploits variation across states and over time (1980-2010), while our analysis of the ESS utilizes variation across European countries and over time (2002-2012). The results provide robust evidence that overall inequality lowers an individual’s sense of trust in others in the United States as well as in other advanced economies. These effects mainly stem from residual inequality, which may be more closely associated with the notion of fairness, as well as inequality in the bottom of the distribution. Since trust has been linked to economic growth and development in the existing literature, these findings suggest an important, indirect way through which inequality affects macro-economic performance.
Keywords:
WP; center; crime rate; marital status; number; social capital; earnings; redistribution; trust government index; trusts government; percent immigrant; poverty rate; trust govt; Income inequality; Personal income; Aging; Disposable income; Europe