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© 2022 International Monetary Fund
WP/22/114
IMF Working Paper
Research Department
Tracking Economic and Financial Policies During COVID-19: An Announcement-Level Database Prepared by Divya Kirti, Yang Liu, Soledad Martinez Peria, Prachi Mishra, and Jan Strasky*
Authorized for distribution by Giovanni Dell’Ariccia
June 2022
IMF Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to encourage debate. The views expressed in IMF Working Papers are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF, its Executive Board, or IMF management.
ABSTRACT: We introduce a new comprehensive announcement-level database tracking the extraordinary fiscal, monetary, prudential, and other policies that countries adopted in response to Covid-19. The database provides detailed information, including sizes where available, for 28 granular policies adopted by 74 countries during 2020. About 5,500 policy measures were announced during this period. Importantly, the database is organized and presented in a format easy for researchers to use in empirical analyses. Announcements were highly correlated across the broad fiscal, monetary, and prudential categories and at more granular levels. Advanced economies (AEs) introduced larger fiscal measures than emerging and developing economies (EMDEs) and relied primarily on large unconventional monetary policies. Bank capital requirements were relaxed widely in both AEs and EMs, while relaxation of provisioning requirements was more common among EMs. Supervisory expectations and reporting requirements were widely relaxed.
| JEL Classification Numbers: | E52, E58, E62, G21, G28, L38 |
| Keywords: | Monetary policy, Fiscal policy, Macroprudential policy, Covid-19 |
| Author’s E-Mail Address: | dkirti@imf.org, yliu12@imf.org, mmartinezperia@imf.org, pmishra@imf.org, jstrasky@imf.org |
| JEL Classification Numbers: | E52, E58, E62, G21, G28, L38 |
| Keywords: | Monetary policy, Fiscal policy, Macroprudential policy, Covid-19 |
| Author’s E-Mail Address: | dkirti@imf.org, yliu12@imf.org, mmartinezperia@imf.org, pmishra@imf.org, jstrasky@imf.org |
Title Page
WORKING PAPERS
Tracking Economic and Financial Policies During COVID-19:
An Announcement-Level Database
Prepared by Divya Kirti, Yang Liu, Soledad Martinez Peria, Prachi Mishra, and Jan Strasky
We thank Celine Allard, Gareth Anderson, Nicholas Blancher, Helge Berger, Irina Bunda, Tommy Chrimes, Luis Cubeddu, Alfredo Cuevas, Jean-Francois Dauphin, Mark Flanagan, Enrique Flores, Davide Furcieri, Geoff Gottlieb, Thomas Helbling, Joong Shik Kang, Yevgeniya Korniyenko, Lamin Leigh, William Lindquist, Donal McGettigan, Carlos Mulas Granados, Iva Petrova, Alex Pienkowski, Michael Perks, John Ralyea, Agustin Roitman, Srikant Seshadri, Nour Tawk, Yu Ching Wong, Yi Wu, Yang Yang and other colleagues at the IMF for help in completing and corroborating the information in our dataset. We also thank Ariadne Maridena Checo de los Santos and Gianluca Yong Gonzalez for excellent research assistance. All errors remain our own. The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF, its Management and Executive Board, or IMF policy.