US federal transfers to individuals are large, countercyclical, vary geographically, and are often credited for helping stabilize regional economies. This paper estimates the short-run effects of these transfers using plausibly exogenous regional variation in temporary stimulus packages and...

The COVID-19-triggered collapse in oil prices in March and April 2020 was the seventh, and by far the most severe, in a series of such collapses since 1970. This paper, first, compares this most recent collapse and its drivers with previous ones in an event study. It finds that it was associated...

The outbreak of COVID-19 and the wide-ranging measures needed to slow its advance triggered an unprecedented collapse in oil demand, a surge in oil inventories, and a record one-month decline in oil prices in March 2020. This paper examines the likely implications of the 2020 oil price plunge...

Accurate poverty measurement relies on household consumption data, but such data are often inadequate, outdated or display inconsistencies over time in poorer countries. To address these data challenges, we employ survey-to-survey imputation to produce estimates for several poverty indicators...

Poverty maps are a useful tool for the targeting of social programs on areas with high concentrations of poverty. However, a static focus on poverty ignores the temporal dimension of poverty. Thus, current nonpoor households still face substantial welfare volatility and are at risk of becoming...

This paper examines productivity growth in Romania using balance sheet data for a census of Romanian firms in 2011-17. Three measures of productivity are estimated: labor productivity, revenue total factor productivity, and revenue total factor productivity adjusted for markups. Drawing from...