Volume 12, Issue 2

The symmetric shock of the Covid-19 pandemic has come with heterogeneous consequences across the world. Within the common institutional framework of the European Union, the outbreak has put under extreme stress governance and interplay between the national and supranational level. Under some coordination, responses have remained largely in the hands and on the shoulders of the Member States. In this context, the article classifies pandemic outbreaks and responses along the containment and fiscal support dimensions to uncover whether a common model for Covid-19 crisis management arises across the EU27 or rather different policy choices patterns emerge within the continent. Based on indicators covering the three dimensions derived from the Oxford Covid Government response tracker, the John Hopkins CSSE Covid-19 database and the European Commission Autumn Forecasts, the paper employs hierarchical cluster analysis to uncover response group across countries and characterize them by the outbreak, containment and fiscal support strengths, delineating as well the geographical distribution across and within the clusters. The findings present the heterogeneity of response models, robust to alternative specifications and timeframes across the first and the second wave, deriving broader implications for the outlook for the vaccine-roll out and exit from the crisis. The dynamics in 2020 are also considered in the context of the shortcomings of supranational governance within the EU and the current policy reform debate, highlighting the high stakes for the upcoming Conference on the Future of Europe. The contribution of the work is furthered by offering a systematic methodology and framework to study heterogeneities of pandemic responses within the EU paving the way for further analysis of contributing factors explaining decision-makers policy choices as well as performance concerning political, social and economic outcomes across the models.

The socio-ecological and political properties of rural and urban landscapes have been argued to produce the differentials in rural-urban health. However, the mechanism of the COVID-19 pattern in this socio-political-ecological perspective has not been understood in Africa. The study used spatial techniques to explore the pattern of urbanization-COVID-19 nexus in Nigeria. It has been argued that three elements (demographic dynamics, infrastructure or governance) typify the socio-political-ecological landscape of urban places. They shape the spread of infectious diseases. We explored the extent to which these factors predict the COVID-19 pattern in Nigeria. The study used data from Nigeria’s Centre for Diseases Control and the National Bureau of Statistics. The results indicate that more urban states in Nigeria tend to have higher COVID-19 cases than rural states. The COVID-19 pattern is best predicted by population dynamics more than other elements. The result indicates demographic attributes are more critical to surges in COVID-19 cases in Nigeria. Places with higher populations and densities will tend to have more spread of the virus than places with lesser populations and densities. Therefore, in a future outbreak, places of high densities should be given more attention to prevent further spread.

The relationship between poverty and the infection and case-fatality rates of COVID-19 has emerged as a controversial but understudied topic. In previous studies and reports from the UK and US evidence emerged that poverty-related indicators had a significant statistical effect on case and mortality rates on district level. For Germany, it has largely been assumed that poverty is an equally relevant factor influencing the transmission rates of the outbreak. This was mostly due to anecdotal evidence from local outbreaks in meat processing plants and reported incidents of infection clusters in poorer city districts. This paper addresses the lack of statistical evidence and investigates thoroughly the link between poverty-related indicators and detected infection and mortality rates of the outbreak using multivariate, multilevel regression while also considering the urban-rural divide of the country. As proxies for poverty the unemployment rate, the per capita presence of general practitioners (physicians), per capita GDP, and the rate of employees with no professional job training is evaluated in relation to the accumulated case and mortality numbers on district level taken from RKI data of June and July 2020. Interestingly, the study finds no general evidence for a poverty-related effect on mortality for German districts during the first wave in the first half of 2020. Furthermore, only employment in low qualification jobs approximated by the job training variable consistently affected case numbers in urban districts in the expected direction.

This paper investigates the trade-off between economics and ethics applying them to “lockdowns” as a policy measure to counter the Covid-19-pandemic. This is an academic research on the nature and mechanism of trade-offs in so far as they apply to decision making. In the course of the line of inquiry pursued here, several different ways of trading off are assessed. In applying them to the pandemics, each yield a different answer to the adequacy of lockdowns as measures against the pandemic. The economic trade-off found “optimalcy” conditions, the utilitarian-ethical trade-off failed to do so revealing that there is a problem using “scientific evidence” as basis for such a trade-off. The value-ethical trade-off found out that lockdowns do not pass the test of proportionality within the usual constitutional framework.

Rising income inequality is one of the greatest challenges facing advanced economies today. Income inequality is multifaceted and is not the inevitable outcome of irresistible structural forces such as globalisation or technological development. Instead, this review shows that inequality has largely been driven by a multitude of political choices. The embrace of neoliberalism since the 1980s has provided the key catalyst for political and policy changes in the realms of union regulation, executive pay, the welfare state and tax progressivity, which have been the key drivers of inequality. These preventable causes have led to demonstrable harmful outcomes that are not explicable solely by material deprivation. This review also shows that inequality has been linked on the economic front with reduced growth, investment and innovation, and on the social front with reduced health and social mobility, and greater violent crime.

For the past decades, income inequality has been on the rise, and so is the frequency of its mentions in recent speeches by central bankers. With the heightened importance of the topic, this research aims to study the impact of monetary policy on income inequality. The study used dynamic models for the analysis, namely; the Error-correction Model (ECM) and the Auto-regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model to determine the relationship in both the short- and long-run. The data used were the top 10% income share and the short-term interest rate. Our main hypothesis is that changes in the short-term interest rate have a significant impact on the top 10% income share. We draw time-series evidence from a sample of nine economies at different stages of development: United States, United Kingdom, Russia, Germany, France, Greece, China, South Africa and Chile. The findings support the hypothesis with interestingly varying effects across our sample. These results provide important implications that can contribute in bettering policy setting and add to the discussion of the role of central banks in reducing income inequality.

This paper analyzes the income inequality effect of economic integration in ECOWAS by decomposing economic integration into two dimensions: trade and fiscal integration approximated respectively by trade intensity and fiscal convergence. For robustness purposes, we use different metrics for each dimension. We also consider the introduction in the region of the growth and convergence pact in the analysis of fiscal integration effect on income inequality. The analysis covers the period 1990–2018. For the empirical evidence, the generalized method of moment is used. The results obtained are robust and reveal that improving regional economic integration has a reducing effect on income inequality. Taken individually, trade integration and fiscal integration contribute to reducing income inequality. However, taken together, the reducing effect of economic integration on income inequality is more pronounced. Besides, the results indicate that fiscal integration has more contributed to the reduction of income inequality since the introduction of the first fiscal convergence pact in the region in 2000 than before. For reducing income inequality, our analysis recommends to ECOWAS countries to take steps to remove barriers to regional trade on the one hand, and on the other hand, to converge together on the fiscal front.

The central issues concerning fiscal policy makers include macroeconomic stability and growth stimulation. The policy decision process is facilitated by investigation on the effects of fiscal policy, such as a change in government spending or taxes on macroeconomic variables comprising inflation, aggregate output, and interest rates. Build on the Blanchard-Perotti identification approach, this paper empirically analyses the influence of fiscal policy to aggregate economic activities in China, and the estimated results are compared between China and the advanced economies. The findings demonstrate that the impulse responses incurred by tax shocks are generally stimulative, although government spending shocks tend to be neutral, revealing meaningful implications for the fiscal space and policy design.

Electoral dynamics is believed to have a direct bearing on the scope of governmental control over the supply of credit to different economic sectors. This paper attempts to examine the impact of opportunistic electoral manipulations, ideological beliefs and political lobbying on the supply of agricultural and industrial credit across the Indian states. The findings indicate that more competitive elections are associated with increases in credit provision. An incumbent party with a more liberal ideology is found to provide greater average credit to agriculture relative to industry. Finally, an increase in the political contributions provided to an incumbent state government is found to entail greater industrial credit and lower agricultural credit, on an average.

Research on gender stereotypes has largely emphasized that women candidates are evaluated differently compared to their male counterparts. In this article, I argue that such differential evaluation put Clinton at an electoral disadvantage in the 2016 election. I develop my expectations based on the differences between feminine stereotypes and masculine stereotypes and how voters’ perceptions of the latter match the longstanding popular expectations for political leaders, in a way that advantages men as candidates and disadvantages women. I also expect that a “gender affinity effect” influenced the election, with Democratic women being more likely to vote for Clinton. In this article, I rely on data from the 2016 American National Election Survey to evaluate the role of gender affinity effect and gender stereotypes in Clinton’s electability. The results show that masculine personality traits had the largest effect and were more fundamental for winning the White House. They also show that there was no significant evidence of a gender affinity effect among Democratic women in terms of voting for Clinton. These results offer new insights into voters’ gender stereotypic perceptions of Clinton and their consequences for the electoral fortunes of women candidates in general.