Global external imbalances widened persistently over the last several years and have narrowed abruptly over the course of the financial crisis. Understanding the extent to which structural or cyclical factors may have driven these patterns is important to assess the likely evolution of global...

The aim of this paper is to provide new estimates of employment-output elasticities and assess the effect of structural and macroeocnomic policies on the employment-intensity of growth. Using an unbalanced panel of 167 countries over the period 1991 - 2009, the results suggest that structural...

Using a sample of 97 countries spanning the period 1980?2008, we estimate that financial crises have a large negative impact on unemployment in the short term, but that this effect rapidly disappears in the medium term in countries with flexible labor market institutions, whereas the impact of...

Commodity prices have increased dramatically and persistently over the past several years, followed by a sharp reversal in recent months. These large and persistent movements in commodity prices raise questions about their implications for global inflation. The process of globalization has...

COVID-19 related travel restrictions, including complete border closures, have been one of the first containment measures to be implemented by many countries and have been continuously adjusted according to the epidemiological situation in departure and destination countries. Despite some easing...