Do institutions matter in a crisis? Regime type and decisive responses to Covid-19

Governments around the world have been implementing measures to contain the COVID-19 pandemic and ease its economic fallout, and there has been extensive variation in the speed and extent to which they have introduced new policies. This article examines the role that regime type plays in determining the decisiveness of government policies to tackle the coronavirus pandemic and its spill over effects. We hypothesize that democratic regimes may be slower to introduce restrictions on civil liberties due to a "freedom commitment” and may be faster to provide economic protections due to a "welfare commitment”. We use event history analysis and data from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker to examine whether less democratic regimes are more likely to implement restrictions faster, and spending programmes slower. Contrary to expectations, our findings suggest that more authoritarian regimes do not implement constraints more quickly or spending more slowly than more democratic regimes. The finding holds across various regime measures and model specifications. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Democratization is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Introduction

The Introduction overviews the chapters of the book and highlights main trends and insights suggested by the analysis of country cases. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Economists and COVID-19: The case of Argentina

The chapter describes the theoretical and economic policy positions held during the pandemic by two diverging groups of economists in Argentina: on the one hand, the government's economic team and associated professional and academic economists following the structuralist/heterodox school of thought;on the other hand, a group of heterogeneous, influential domestic economists adhering to more orthodox/liberalist economic and political ideas. The analysis presented here focuses on the diverging positions and reactions around three areas: (i) whether containment measures such as lockdowns were to be adopted permanently, and if they were the most appropriate;(ii) the evaluation of the economic relief policies being implemented;(iii) how to face the issue of financing under a dollar shortage. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Wavelet analysis of S&P 500, oil prices, and economic policy uncertainty

We collect a total of 1830 data from January 2020 to June 2022 and use R for data processing and wavelet analysis. Moreover, we analyze the interactions between the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russian-Ukrainian war, crude oil price, the S&P 500 and economic policy uncertainty within a time-frequency frame work. As a result that the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian-Ukrainian war has the extraordinary effects on the three indexes and the effect of the Russian- Ukrainian war on the crude oil price and US stock price higher than on the US economic uncertainty. © COPYRIGHT SPIE.

Measuring the frequency and quantile connectedness between policy categories and global oil price

This study explores the connectedness between various categories of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) and global crude oil prices in different frequencies and quantiles using the generalized forecast error variance decomposition and data in the US, China, and Japan from January 2000 to May 2022. The empirical results may be summarized as follows. First, total short and long term connectedness exhibits different patterns and is more sensitive to extreme positive and negative shocks than regular shocks. Second, fiscal policy uncertainty (FPU) and monetary policy uncertainty (MPU) tend to act as net transmitters of shocks, while the roles of trade policy uncertainty (TPU) are mixed in the short term, irrespective of the country. However, under extreme market conditions, no specific-category EPU features a clear net transmitter/recipient. Finally, the results are qualitatively and quantitatively unaffected by the chosen proxy of crude oil prices and are not altered by global real economic activity. © 2023 Elsevier Ltd

Aggregate Learning for Mixed Frequency Data

Large and acute economic shocks such as the 2007-2009 financial crisis and the current COVID-19 infections rapidly change the economic environment. In such a situation, real-time analysis of regional heterogeneity of economic conditions using alternative data is essential. We take advantage of spatio-temporal granularity of alternative data and propose a Mixed-Frequency Aggregate Learning (MF-AGL) model that predicts economic indicators for the smaller areas in real-time. We apply the model for the real-world problem;prediction of the number of job applicants which is closely related to the unemployment rates. We find that the proposed model predicts (i) the regional heterogeneity of the labor market condition and (ii) the rapidly changing economic status. The model can be applied to various tasks, especially economic analysis. © 2022 IEEE.

Forecasting the volatility of precious metals prices with global economic policy uncertainty in pre and during the COVID-19 period: Novel evidence from the GARCH-MIDAS approach

Economic policy is a major determinant of investment and financial decisions;Moreover, prices of precious metals are highly influenced by any uncertainty recorded in the global economic policy. Therefore, the prime consideration of the authors is to assess how global economic policy uncertainty influences the volatility of precious metals prices;particularly "gold, palladium, platinum, and silver” in the pre and during the COVID-19 pandemic. This research analyzed the full sample period (the 1997–2022), pre-COVID period (1997–2019), and during the COVID period (2020−2022) to evaluate the impact during different sample periods. Therefore, the GARCH-MIDAS approach is employed at the data set of different frequencies, i.e., monthly data of GEPU and daily data of precious metals. The results reveal a significant nexus between global GEPU and precious metals price volatility. The findings infer that any uncertainty recorded in global economic policy escalate the price volatility of gold, palladium, platinum, and silver prices. The present study increments the existing literature and provides insights for future scholars, investors, and policymakers. © 2023 Elsevier B.V.

Word embeddings for topic modeling: An application to the estimation of the economic policy uncertainty index

The quantification of economic uncertainty is key to the prediction of macroeconomic variables, such as gross domestic product (GDP), and is particularly crucial in regard to real-time or short-time prediction methodologies, such as nowcasting, where a large amount of time series data is required. Most of the data comes from official agency statistics and non-public institutions, but these sources are susceptible to lack of information due to major disruptive events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of this, it is very common nowadays to use non-traditional data from different sources. The economic policy uncertainty (EPU) index is the indicator most frequently used to quantify uncertainty and is based on topic modeling of newspapers. In this paper, we propose a methodology to estimate the EPU index that incorporates a fast and efficient method for topic modeling of digital news based on semantic clustering with word embeddings, allowing us to update the index in real time, which is something that other studies have failed to manage. We show that our proposal enables us to update the index and significantly reduce the time required for new document assignation into topics. © 2022 Elsevier Ltd

Which is leading: Renewable or brown energy assets?

This study examines the relationship between crude oil, a proxy for brown energy, and several renewable energy stock sector indices (e.g., solar energy, wind energy, bioenergy, and geothermal energy) over various investment horizons. Using daily data from October 15, 2010, to February 23, 2022, we apply a combination of methods involving co-integration, wavelet coherency, and wavelet-based Granger causality. The results show that the relationship between crude oil and renewable energy indices is non-linear and somewhat multifaceted. Firstly, there are sectorial differences in the intensity of the relationships. Notably, the relationship intensity between the wind and crude oil is lower than that involving geothermal energy or bioenergy. Secondly, the relationship evolves with time. For example, the COVID-19 outbreak seems to have increased the relationship between crude oil and renewable energy markets, notably for solar, bioenergy, and geothermal. Thirdly, the relationship varies across scales. When controlling for the VIX (volatility index), a proxy of the sentiment of market participants, and EPU (economic policy uncertainty index), the relationship seems strong in the long term but weak in the short term. This result is confirmed using a Granger causality test on the wavelet-decomposed series. These findings have important implications for long-term investors, short-term speculators, and policymakers regarding the co-movement between brown and renewable energy markets. © 2022 Elsevier B.V.

EUROPEAN UNION, PANDEMICS, AND WARS

Economic and social crises like those experienced in 2020-2022 are familiar from earlier European experiences. What is now the European Union originated in a common-market toolbox in the aftermath of World War II. It evolved through crises into a complicated and unstable set of policies and institutions. The COVID-19 and war in Ukraine reinforced policy coordination and added a novel common fiscal facility to that supranational policy framework, but renewed emphasis on governments and subsidies threatens the crucial role of integrated markets as the principal instrument for growth, cohesion, stability, and peace in Europe. © 2022, Casa Editrice Leo S. Olschki. All rights reserved.

The Adequacy of Nigeria, South Africa and Other Sub-Saharan Countries' Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic and Unemployment

The measures taken by the governments of the sub-Saharan states, especially in Nigeria and South Africa, in a bid to curb the spread of the dreaded corona virus (COVID-19) are discussed in this article. It is submitted that measures such as social distancing and lockdown of businesses exacerbated the existing problem of unemployment in sub-Saharan countries. Accordingly, this article analyzes the adequacy of the relevant laws and policies that were adopted by the governments of selected sub-Saharan African countries, namely, Nigeria and South Africa in a bid to stimulate the economy and to reduce unemployment in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nigeria and South Africa were selected because they are amongst the largest economies in sub-Saharan Africa. The authors argue that the governments of Nigeria and South Africa should adopt and enforce pragmatic policies that are backed by appropriate legislation to combat the huge unemployment rate which was worsened by the advent of COVID-19. The article highlights that the problem of unemployment in Nigeria and South Africa must be addressed through adequate review of the employment policies, finance policies, educational curriculum and other related policies. It further recommends the review of the empowerment and socio-economic policies of these countries in order to prevent restlessness, riots and poverty-related protests that are induced by massive unemployment of the youth, women and other marginalized persons in Nigeria and South Africa.

Shared humanity, awareness of socio-economic privilege, and classism during the pandemic as predictors of supporting equal socio-economic policies.

The coronavirus pandemic has caused unemployment to skyrocket, exposed the longstanding inequalities in health care services and working conditions, and mainly affected the poor in different parts of the world. In the current study, we focus on social identity and social class-related factors that are critical during the pandemic to gain insights into what predicts support for policies favoring economic equality in the post-pandemic period. We argue that to the extent that individuals 1) identify with all humanity during the pandemic, 2) are aware of their socio-economic status-based privilege, 3) do not hold classist attitudes, they would support policies favoring economic equality. In Study 1, survey data from 1212 participants in Turkey were analyzed by means of hierarchical linear regression analysis. The findings showed that stronger identification with all humanity, higher awareness of socio-economic status-based privilege, and less endorsement of classist attitudes predict more support for socio-economic equality policies in the post-pandemic period, after controlling for socio-demographic and socio-political characteristics of participants. Study 2 (N = 212) replicated the findings in a different context, namely the U.S. Our findings extend previous studies by showing the importance of a global identity, such as shared human identity, in the ongoing and potentially in the aftermath of the pandemic. In addition, our findings highlight the joint contributions of socio-economic factors such as classist attitudes and awareness of class-based privilege to the support for socio-economic policies.

ECONOMIC POLICY IMPLEMENTATION TRENDS IN RENEWABLE ENERGY DEVELOPMENT

Under the strong impact of COVID-19 and the continuous game of the world economy, the world economy has gradually formed a “regional economic system”. This competitive economic landscape will accelerate regional energy demand, but also exacerbate global supply and demand contradictions, so the development of renewable energy and related economic policies is crucial. In this paper, the European Union, the United States, and China are selected as the three major economic systems to compare and analyze their renewable energy economic policies, reveal their problems, analyze their characteristics and trends, to get the overall trend of global renewable energy economic policies. © 2022 Latvia University of Life Sciences and Technologies. All rights reserved.

The PERISCOPE Data Atlas: A Demonstration of Release v1.2

The Data Atlas is the centerpiece of the PERISCOPE project’s data-driven research. The Atlas constitutes a centralized access point for the exploration, visualization and analysis of the original data produced by PERISCOPE partners, integrated with the most relevant information about the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on health, economics, policy-making, and society at large. The Atlas interfaces and tools make such data readily available to the research community, decision makers and the general public, providing the means to amplify its reach and impact. The present demo, showcases the features of v1.2 release of the Atlas, 18 months from the project kick-off, and some of the planned enhancements to be delivered until project month 24. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

The Relationship between the Real Effective Exchange Rate and Industrial Production in the Turkish Economy

The industrial sector is one of the key sectors for the Turkish economy in terms of production, employment and exports. The volatility in the exchange rate in the Turkish economy has important effects on industrial production, as well as many economic variables. The main purpose of this study is to empirically analyse the effects of real effective exchange rate on industrial production for the Turkish economy in the 2009M08-2022M01 period. According to the results of the study, the real effective exchange rate adversely affects the industrial production in the Turkish economy. Other things being equal, the depreciation of the domestic currency increases the foreign demand for industrial products, in line with the economic theory. Considering these relations between real effective exchange rate and industrial production while designing economic policies is important for sustainable economic growth.

Tackling inequality and governance challenges: Insights from the COVID-19 pandemic

The article addresses inequality and governance in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Globally, it highlights ways in which COVID-19 has further exacerbated the already worrying inequality levels. Specifically, it addresses issues such as vaccine nationalism, rising income inequality levels, while the minority become richer, some from the manufacturing and selling of COVID-related products. From a governance perspective, it is argued that the reliance on liberal democracies to deliver equality is proving to be insufficient as these have been noted to pursue and prioritise market-based strategies that ultimately perpetuate inequality. Ultimately, it is forwarded that there needs to be a rethinking of the global political economy policies, including debt, health systems, intellectual property laws and trade, in order to directly address how such systems perpetuate inequality. In the context of the African continent, the article highlights the difficulty in accessing vaccines, posing a major threat to the continent, which is experiencing waves of the pandemic that are more disturbing than those that went before. It also highlights the extent to which paucity of research affects vaccine efficiency on the continent. COVID-19 has further worsened the already precarious political and economic situation in most of Africa, characterised by countries being unable to pay debt, electoral political violence, COVID-19 denialism, exploiting COVID-19 to clamp down on opposition, and misuse of COVID-19 funds. Thus, it is recommended that there needs to be an overhaul of the already broken fiscal and political environments rather than the adoption of piecemeal economic solutions such as debt freezes, or politically-flawed ones, that ultimately do not work. © 2021, Pretoria University Law Press. All rights reserved.

Macroeconomic Policies, Economic Revitalization

The chapter below represents the summary of a research approach carried out in order to provide decisive support for the public environment of the Romanian economy, which, like any other public decision maker in the world, has difficulty in substantiating public policies due to the COVID-19 pandemic unexpectedly in which the epidemic appeared and its rapid spread led us to consider that, on the one hand, research can be based on little quantitative information of limited relevance because the historical perspective of the economy was interrupted which determined that the data series statistics and identifiable economic policy details may no longer be relevant to the present times;on the other hand, economic policy decisions currently required a reactive adaptation to economic developments without historically relevant experiences often marked by an intuitive adaptation of developments. The model of economic rationality based on the consideration of maximizing the interests of economic agents were identified as being adapted to health security principles which made the theoretical retrieval of research difficult because a perspective in which we continue on pre-crisis behavioural expectations would be special. From conception, the results of those through which economic policies are currently based. For these reasons, during the research, we often used estimated values of economic indicators and we relied on the formulation of scenarios. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Vulnerability to COVID-19, prejudice, and support for economic restrictions towards countries with high level of contamination

Recent research has extensively investigated how the current COVID-19 pandemic can affect intergroup relations. Much less is known about the impact of COVID-19 on economic and trade decisions. Could the intergroup effects of this pandemic shape support for international economic policies? The aim of this study was to examine the support for restrictive economic policies towards countries with very high levels of COVID-19 contamination (China and Italy) during the first lockdown period (March - April 2020). The survey was conducted in Romania (N = 669) and included measures of COVID-19 vulnerability, prejudice, and support for economic restrictive policy (e.g., to reduce international trade;to set higher taxes). Results showed that higher support for restrictive policies toward China was associated with greater perceived vulnerability to COVID-19 and this link was partially mediated by prejudice toward China. In contrast, support for economic restrictive policies toward Italy was greater when perceived vulnerability to COVID-19 was high, but this relationship between variables was not explained by negative attitudes towards Italy. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

G20 and Global Risk Analysis

This article studies the work carried out by the Group of 20 (G20) between the global crises of 2008-09 and 2020. Active G20 efforts to ensure financial stability and control imbalances helped to mitigate vulnerabilities to crises of the 2008-09 type. Other key achievements included the transition of several G20 members to market-determined exchange rates and the Standard for Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information as a part of the effort to combat base erosion and profit shifting. However, the G20 proved unprepared for the 2020 crisis, even though G20 leaders had noted the risks linked to infectious diseases in 2015. During the period between the crises, the G20 failed to establish an effective system for analyzing global risks. Indeed, its analysis was mainly adaptive as opposed to forward-looking;no mechanism was formed for controlling policies to manage risks. G20 members' involvement in the analysis was inadequate, reflecting the consistent pattern of lower incentives for cooperation in the context of comparatively benign global economic conjunctures. Currently, however, the importance of managing global systemic risks is obvious and is reflected in the G20 Action Plan for supporting the global economy through the COVID-19 pandemic. This article presents recommendations for the key elements of this risk management (systematic identification of most probable/destructive vulnerabilities;development of strategies to minimize critical risks and mitigate their possible consequences;monitoring for early warning signs of the most critical vulnerabilities;organizing prompt consultations and adopting swift measures in response to the materialization of globally important risks), including mechanisms for members' self-accountability and collaboration with international organizations. Management of systemic risks should start with resolving the challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic: improving public health response systems;promoting structural economic transformations while ensuring prompt return to full employment;and striking the right balance between economic stimulus and macroeconomic stability.

Does more stringencies in government policies during pandemic impact stock returns? Fresh evidence from GREF countries, a new emerging green bloc.

In this paper, we investigate the impact of the government economic policies in addition to the more stringent Covid-19 policies on stock index returns of GREF countries, that is, a new economic bloc of 5 countries (Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Russia, and China) to foster for sustainable development of the region. Using the Panel, ARDL model and data for index returns and economic and Covid-19 control policies for the period March 1, 2020-June 30, 2021, results show that Income support, workplace closure, stringency index, and cancellation of public events have a significant positive impact on the stock index returns over the long run. In contrast, school closure, restriction on public gatherings, and international travel control policies negatively impact stock returns. In comparison, Debt policies, Covid-19 testing policies, health index, and face-covering policies remain insignificant. In the short run, stringent index and face-covering policies remain positively significant. Results of the study suggest significant policy implications that can help reform economic and Covid-19 control policies and promote the region's economic growth over the long-run period.