US federal transfers to individuals are large, countercyclical, vary geographically, and are often credited for helping stabilize regional economies.
... See More + This paper estimates the short-run effects of these transfers using plausibly exogenous regional variation in temporary stimulus packages and earlier permanent Social Security increases. States that received larger transfers tended to grow faster contemporaneously, with a multiplier of around 1.5 for permanent transfers and 1/3 for temporary transfers. Results are broadly consistent with an open-economy New Keynesian model. At business-cycle frequencies, cross-region transfer multipliers are not large, suggesting only modest gains in regional stabilization from US federal automatic stabilizers.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS9244 MAY 12, 2020
Should the China-U.S. trade agreement prompt relief because it averts a damaging trade war or concern because selective preferential access for the United States to China's markets breaks multilateral rules against discrimination?
... See More + The answer depends on how China implements the agreement. Simulations from a computable general equilibrium model suggest that the United States and China would be better off under this "managed trade" agreement than if the trade war had escalated. However, compared with the policy status quo, the deal will make everyone worse off except the United States and its input-supplying neighbor, Mexico. Real incomes in the rest of world would decline by 0.16 percent and in China by 0.38 percent because of trade diversion. China can reverse those losses if, instead of granting the United States privileged entry, it opens its market for all trading partners. Global income would be 0.6 percent higher than under the managed trade scenario, and China's income would be nearly 0.5 percent higher. By creating a stronger incentive for China to open its markets to all, an exercise in bilateral mercantilism has the potential to become an instrument for multilateral liberalization.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS9173 MAR 03, 2020
This paper examines the impacts of U.S.-China trade tensions via the lens of East Asian stock markets. Studying 10 indices of the main East Asian stock markets, it finds that announcements of "trade war" escalation translated into 50 to 60 percent of the total declines in two major Chinese stock markets over the first eight months of 2018.
... See More + In other words, in the absence of the "trade war" Asian stocks would have experienced half the decline, or they would have registered gains.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS9068 NOV 26, 2019
De Nicola,Francesca; Kessler,Martin Dov Alfred; Nguyen,Ha MinhDisclosed
This report discusses the remarks delivered by David Malpass, President of the World Bank. He points that the common challenges are world growth is slowing.
... See More + He discusses the governance issues are apparent around the world. How do one settle disputes, how do one have contracts that are transparent, fair, where do one go, and facilitate better living standards.
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This report discusses the remarks delivered by David Malpass, President of the World Bank. He points that the common challenges are world growth is slowing.
... See More + He discusses the governance issues are apparent around the world. How do one settle disputes, how do one have contracts that are transparent, fair, where do one go, and facilitate better living standards.
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This report discusses the remarks delivered by David Malpass, President of the World Bank. He points that the common challenges are world growth is slowing.
... See More + He discusses the governance issues are apparent around the world. How do one settle disputes, how do one have contracts that are transparent, fair, where do one go, and facilitate better living standards.
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This report discusses the remarks delivered by David Malpass, President of the World Bank. He points that the common challenges are world growth is slowing.
... See More + He discusses the governance issues are apparent around the world. How do one settle disputes, how do one have contracts that are transparent, fair, where do one go, and facilitate better living standards.
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Doing business 2020 is the 17th in a series of annual studies investigating the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it.
... See More + Doing business presents quantitative indicators on business regulations and the protection of property rights that can be compared across 190 economies - from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe - and over time. Regulations affecting 12 areas of the life of a business are covered: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts, resolving insolvency, employing workers, and contracting with the government. The employing workers and contracting with the government indicator sets are not included in this year’s ranking on the ease of doing business. Data in doing business 2020 are current as of May 1, 2019. The indicators are used to analyze economic outcomes and identify what reforms of business regulation have worked, where, and why. This economy profile presents indicators for San Marino for 2020, San Marino ranks 92.
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Doing business 2020 is the 17th in a series of annual studies investigating the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it.
... See More + Doing business presents quantitative indicators on business regulations and the protection of property rights that can be compared across 190 economies - from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe - and over time. Regulations affecting 12 areas of the life of a business are covered: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts, resolving insolvency, employing workers, and contracting with the government. The employing workers and contracting with the government indicator sets are not included in this year’s ranking on the ease of doing business. Data in doing business 2020 are current as of May 1, 2019. The indicators are used to analyze economic outcomes and identify what reforms of business regulation have worked, where, and why. This economy profile presents indicators for United States for 2020, United States ranks 6.
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Doing business 2020 is the 17th in a series of annual studies investigating the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it.
... See More + Doing business presents quantitative indicators on business regulations and the protection of property rights that can be compared across 190 economies - from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe - and over time. Regulations affecting 12 areas of the life of a business are covered: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts, resolving insolvency, employing workers, and contracting with the government. The employing workers and contracting with the government indicator sets are not included in this year’s ranking on the ease of doing business. Data in doing business 2020 are current as of May 1, 2019. The indicators are used to analyze economic outcomes and identify what reforms of business regulation have worked, where, and why. This economy profile presents indicators for Canada; for 2020, Canada ranks 23.
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On July 29, 2019, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) Board of Governors adopted resolution number six hundred and sixty nine.
... See More + It was resolved that the 2022 annual meetings shall be convened in Washington, D.C., on Friday, October 14, 2022, and that the 2023 annual meetings shall be convened in Washington, D.C., on Friday, October 13, 2023.
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How should economists interpret current trade wars and the recent U.S. trade actions that have initiated them? This paper offers an interpretation of current U.S. trade actions that is at once more charitable and less forgiving than that typically offered by economic commentators.
... See More + More charitable, because under this interpretation it is possible to see a logic to these actions: the United States is initiating a change from "rules-based" to "power-based" tariff bargaining and is selecting countries with which it runs bilateral trade deficits as the most suitable targets of its bargaining tariffs. Less forgiving, because the main costs of these trade tactics cannot be avoided even if they happen to "work" and deliver lower tariffs. Rather, the paper shows that the main costs will arise from the use of the tactics themselves, and from the damage done by those tactics to the rules-based multilateral trading system and the longer-term interests of the United States and the rest of the world.
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Differences in life expectancy between high and low socioeconomic groups are often large and have widened in recent decades. In the United States, the differences may now be as large as ten to fourteen years.
... See More + These longevity gaps strongly affect the actuarial fairness and progressivity of many public pension systems, raising the question of possible policy reforms to address this issue. This paper reviews the empirical literature on the longevity differences across socioeconomic groups and their impacts on lifetime benefits, considers how these impacts depend on four different pay-as-you-go pension structures (calibrated on the US case), and discusses some policy options.
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Working Paper (Numbered Series) 136560 APR 01, 2019
This paper presents different deep neural network architectures designed to forecast the distribution of returns on a portfolio of U.S. Treasury securities.
... See More + A long short-term memory model and a convolutional neural network are tested as the main building blocks of each architecture. The models are then augmented by cross-sectional data and the portfolio's empirical distribution. The paper also presents the fit and generalization potential of each approach.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8790 MAR 21, 2019
Following a couple of decades of offshoring, the fear today is of reshoring. Using administrative data on Mexican exports by municipality, sector and destination from 2004 to 2014, this paper investigates how local labor markets in Mexico that are more exposed to automation in the U.S. through trade fared in exports and employment outcomes.
... See More + The results show that an increase of one robot per thousand workers in the U.S. -- about twice the increase observed between 2004-2014 -- lowers growth in exports per worker from Mexico to the U.S. by 6.7 percent. Higher exposure to U.S. automation did not affect wage employment, nor manufacturing wage employment overall. Yet, the latter is the result of two counteracting forces. Exposure to U.S. automation reduced manufacturing wage employment in areas where occupations were initially more susceptible to being automated; but exposure increased manufacturing wage employment in other areas. Finally, the analysis also finds negative impacts of exposure to local automation on local labor market outcomes.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8741 FEB 14, 2019
Since the introduction of the KiwiSaver scheme in New Zealand in 2006, several countries have implemented, or are in the process of implementing, voluntary funded pension systems with automatic enrollment features.
... See More + Since most of the literature has focused on countries with the common law tradition, including the United Kingdom and the United States, this note analyzes cases of countries with the civil code tradition, including Turkey, Poland, the Russian Federation, Chile, Brazil, and the Province of Quebec in Canada. This sample includes mostly emerging economies, with reforms at different stages, from those that have already been completed to those that are about to start discussions in their parliaments. Although they are not a substitute for necessary parametric reforms, automatic enrollment schemes offer the possibility of improvements in future retirement income for a significant part of the labor force. This note stresses that the paternalistic approach of automatic enrollment schemes imposes a great degree of responsibility on governments and requires careful consideration of the design of the system, including the industrial organization of the pension fund industry and default investment strategies. Sufficient time and resources for preparing communication and educational campaigns has played a key role in achieving high rates of participation.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8726 FEB 05, 2019
Sixteenth in a series of annual reports comparing business regulation in 190 economies, Doing Business 2019 covers 11 areas of business regulation.
... See More + Ten of these areas - starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and resolving insolvency - are included in the ease of doing business score and ease of doing business ranking. Doing Business also measures features of labor market regulation, which is not included in these two measures. Doing Business provides objective measures of business regulations and their enforcement across 190 economies and selected cities at the subnational and regional level. This economy profile presents indicators for United States; for 2019 United States ranks 8.
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Sixteenth in a series of annual reports comparing business regulation in 190 economies, Doing Business 2019 covers 11 areas of business regulation.
... See More + Ten of these areas - starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and resolving insolvency - are included in the ease of doing business score and ease of doing business ranking. Doing Business also measures features of labor market regulation, which is not included in these two measures. Doing Business provides objective measures of business regulations and their enforcement across 190 economies and selected cities at the subnational and regional level. This economy profile presents indicators for San Marino; for 2019 San Marino ranks 88.
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Sixteenth in a series of annual reports comparing business regulation in 190 economies, Doing Business 2019 covers 11 areas of business regulation.
... See More + Ten of these areas - starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and resolving insolvency - are included in the ease of doing business score and ease of doing business ranking. Doing Business also measures features of labor market regulation, which is not included in these two measures. Doing Business provides objective measures of business regulations and their enforcement across 190 economies and selected cities at the subnational and regional level. This economy profile presents indicators for Canada; for 2019 Canada ranks 22.
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The World Bank Monthly Operational Summary (MOS) reports on the status of projects in the WorldBank’s pipeline from the time the operation is identified to the signing of the Loan, Credit, or Grant Agreement.
... See More + It is a detailed accounting of the projects included in the country lending programs that are actively being prepared for implementation. The lending programs reflect the Bank’s strategy for each member country as set out in the Country Partnership Framework (CPF) presented to the Board of Executive Directors of the World Bank. On average, it takes about 13 months for the Bank to process a project from concept to approval. After a financing agreement is signed or a project is dropped from the program, the project entry is deleted from this summary. Each issue of the summary contains a list of projects reported for the first time and the list of projects deleted from the current issue. Familiarity with the Bank’s project cycle, summarized in the following paragraphs, can help potential bidders identify business opportunities with Bank borrowers. Each entry in the MOS indicates at what point the operation is in the project cycle.
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