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International Monetary Fund. African Dept.
This paper on Benin highlights poverty reduction and growth strategy. The National Development Plan (PND) is designed to specify the strategic benchmarks for development activities for the eight-year period until 2025, the target date for the implementation and completion of the Vision. The analysis suggests a low literacy rate, low performance levels in the education system and vulnerable public health situation due to insufficient public access to health services. Based on Benin’s comparative advantages with the ambitions enshrined in the Benin 2025 Alafia Vision, developments in international and regional trends, the chosen strategic option is to make agroindustry, tourism, and services the engine of inclusive, sustainable economic growth in a context of more effective national and local governance, based on the development of human capital and infrastructures. Sustainable management of the living conditions and the environment along with the emergence of regional development hubs require ensuring enforcement of legislative and regulatory texts.
Jiaming Soh
,
Myrto Oikonomou
,
Carlo Pizzinelli
,
Mr. Ippei Shibata
, and
Ms. Marina Mendes Tavares
This paper investigates whether the COVID-19 recession led to an increase in demand for digital occupations in the United States. Using O*NET to capture the digital content of occupations, we find that regions that were hit harder by the COVID-19 recession experienced a larger increase in the share of digital occupations in both employment and newly-posted vacancies. This result is driven, however, by the smaller decline in demand for digital workers relative to non-digital ones, and not by an absolute increase in the demand for digital workers. While our evidence supports the view that digital workers, particularly those in urban areas and cognitive occupations, were more insulated during this recession, there is little indication of a persistent shift in the demand for digital occupations.
Mr. Olumuyiwa S Adedeji
,
Huancheng Du
, and
Mr. Maxwell Opoku-Afari
The inclusiveness of growth depends on the extent of access to economic and social opportunities. This paper applies the concept of social opportunity function to ascertain the inclusiveness of growth episodes in selected African countries. Premised on the concept of social welfare function, inclusive growth is associated with increased average opportunities available to the population and improvement in their distribution. The paper establishes that the high growth episodes in the last decade in the selected countries came with increased average opportunities in education and health; but distribution of such opportunities varied across countries, depending on the country-specific policies underpining the growth episodes.
International Monetary Fund
The small states of the Asia and Pacific region face unique challenges in raising their growth potential and living standards. These countries are particularly vulnerable because of their small populations, geographical isolation and dispersion, narrow export and production bases, lack of economies of scale, limited access to international capital markets, exposure to shocks (including climate change), and heavy reliance on aid. In providing public services, they face higher fixed government costs relative to other states because public services must be provided regardless of their small population size. Low access to credit by the private sector is an impediment to inclusive growth. Capacity constraints are another key challenge. The small states also face more limited policy tools. Five out of 13 countries do not have a central bank and the scope for diversifying their economies is narrow. Given their large development needs, fiscal policies have been, at times, pro-cyclical. Within the Asia-Pacific small states group, the micro states are subject to more vulnerability and macroeconomic volatility than the rest of the Asia-Pacific small states.
International Monetary Fund. Research Dept.
IMF research summaries on global population aging and pension reform (by Mario Catalán) and on questions about decoupling (by M. Ayhan Kose); country study on the United States (by Koshy Mathai); listing of visiting scholars at the IMF during June–August 2008; listing of contents of Vol. 55 No. 3 of IMF Staff Papers; listing of recent IMF Working Papers; and a listing of recent external publications by IMF staff.
International Monetary Fund
This Selected Issues paper analyzes the key features of the Japanese business cycle, and investigates whether the current recovery differs from past recoveries. In particular, this paper poses the following questions: what are the main characteristics of Japanese business cycles since 1980, and what happens to output, expenditure components, and prices over the cycle? The paper reviews the recent performance and policy issues with respect to the banking sector, insurance sector, and public financial sector in Japan. The stability of the financial sector is also assessed.