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The fight against the coronavirus pandemic has led to an insulation of social and economic life and will have considerable economic consequences. Important areas of the industry and service sectors were partially or completely shutdown. A resumption of activity should happen as soon as possible, once the medical pre-conditions have been established and are met. This requires a clear exit strategy and following several steps to return to previous welfare and growth data levels. After securing survival during this crisis via various liquidity lines and bridging loans, the economy's restart requires the relaunch of public infrastructure, especially of schools and kindergartens. To facilitate a coordinated and synchronised restart of complex industrial value chains, we need clear signals on a planned schedule. A tax policy driven departure signal and a demand side focused growth programme could make an important contribution to a new economic dynamic after the crisis.

Cross-country labor productivity differences are larger in agriculture than in non-agriculture. We propose a new explanation for these patterns in which the self-selection of heterogeneous workers determines sector productivity. We formalize our theory in a generalequilibrium Roy model in which preferences feature a subsistence food requirement. In the model, subsistence requirements induce workers that are relatively unproductive at agricultural work to nonetheless select into the agriculture sector in poor countries. When parameterized, the model predicts that productivity differences are roughly twice as large in agriculture as non-agriculture even when countries differ by an economy-wide efficiency term that affects both sectors uniformly.

In 2018, Paul Romer and William Nordhaus shared the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Romer was recognized \"for integrating technological innovations into long-run macroeconomic analysis\". This article reviews his prize-winning contributions. Romer, together with others, rejuvenated the field of economic growth. He developed the theory of endogenous technological change, in which the search for new ideas by profit-maximizing entrepreneurs and researchers is at the heart of economic growth. Underlying this theory, he pinpointed that the nonrivalry of ideas is ultimately responsible for the rise in living standards over time.

Using quarterly data (2009Q2–2022Q2), this study investigates the macroeconomic determinants of SME growth in South Africa through ARDL bounds testing and Granger causality. Findings show a long-run negative relationship between SME growth, unemployment, and GDP growth, while inflation and exchange rate have a long-run positive effect on SME revenue growth. Short-run dynamics indicate that GDP growth and REER both have a strong positive impact on SME revenue growth, while other macroeconomic variables are insignificant in the short run. These results highlight the need for macroeconomic stability and long-term targeted funding for SMEs in order to promote inclusive growth and job creation. Theoretical Contribution/Originality: The theoretical contribution of this study is to integrate the resource-based view with the macro-financial framework to explain how external economic conditions affect the internal growth capacity of SMEs in South Africa. Unlike previous studies, which have focused mainly on firm-level or access-to-financing constraints, this study advances the theory that macroeconomic stability through GDP growth, low inflation, job dynamics, and exchange rate behaviour creates an environment in which SMEs can use internal resources efficiently. This study employs the ARDL model to capture short- and long-term interdependencies, offering the first empirical evidence on how national macroeconomic conditions drive firm-level competitiveness and inclusive growth in emerging economies across Africa.

The impacts of energy shortages characterized by regular blackouts, natural gas, and electricity load shedding in Pakistan affected each economic sector, causing an energy-induced crisis and ecological sustainability issues. This study was conducted to reveal the benefits of renewable energy and describe the economic losses associated with electricity unavailability using supply-driven input-output as a price model across 34 sectors. The results revealed that exogenous shocks in electricity prices are responsible for bringing significant fluctuations across the business cycle in the country. Similarly, the overall output of Pakistan's economy will decrease by 24.89 rupees due to a 1-kilowatt-hour reduction in electricity supply. Moreover, both forward and backward linkages of Pakistan's economy revealed that higher electricity allocation coefficients pose significant output impacts on most sectors. We conclude that indirect output impacts require due consideration to avoid the underestimation problem due to total electricity shortages. It is recommended that the government provide a social and legal framework to boost the environmental sustainability and economic activities in the textile, oil refining, production of cement, and fertilizer sectors for sustainable economic growth.

Productivity growth is important for long-term economic growth and development, and technology adoption is one of its key drivers. This study empirically assesses whether political regimes are a significant determinant of technology diffusion. Specifically, we examine the effects of political regimes on diffusion of technology using data based on a sample of 104 technologies from 137 countries for the period 1901 to 2000. We consider detailed categories of technologies and investigate the differences in the impacts of political regimes on each technology. Our estimation results show that democracy does not have a significant impact on the overall diffusion of technology but it is positively associated with the diffusion of health- and agriculture-related technologies. Furthermore, the diffusion of infrastructure, general, and other sector-specific technologies is not influenced by political regimes. Considering different types of democracies and dictatorships, we find that parliamentary democracy has a positive impact on health- and agriculture-related technology diffusion. On the contrary, all types of dictatorships, namely civilian, military, and royal, have negative impacts on diffusion of technology.

This study investigates the role of mobile money innovations in the incidence of income inequality on poverty and severity of poverty in 42 sub-Saharan African countries over the period 1980 to 2019. Mobile money innovations are understood as the mobile used to send money and the mobile used to pay bills online while income inequality is measured with the Gini index. Poverty is measured as the poverty headcount ratio while the severity of poverty is generated as the squared of the poverty gap index. The empirical evidence is based on interactive Quantile regressions. The following main findings are established. (i) Income inequality unconditionally reduces poverty and the severity of poverty though the significance is not throughout the conditional distributions of poverty and the severity of poverty. (ii) Mobile money innovations significantly moderate the positive incidence of income inequality on poverty and the severity of poverty in some quantiles. (iii) Positive net effects are apparent exclusively in the poverty regressions. (iv) Given the negative conditional effects, policy thresholds or minimum mobile money innovation levels needed to completely nullify the positive incidence of income inequality on poverty are provided: 27.666 (% age 15 +) and 24.000 (% age 15 +) of the mobile used to send money in the 50th and 75th quantiles, respectively and 16.272 (% age 15 +) and 13.666 (% age 15 +) of the mobile used to pay bills online in the 10th and 50th quantiles, respectively. Policy implications are discussed with respect of SDG1 on poverty reduction and SDG10 on inequality mitigation.

This paper examines the central hypothesis of the influential Malthusian theory, according to which improvements in the technological environment during the preindustrial era had generated only temporary gains in income per capita, eventually leading to a larger, but not significantly richer, population. Exploiting exogenous sources of cross-country variations in land productivity and the level of technological advancement, the analysis demonstrates that, in accordance with the theory, technological superiority and higher land productivity had significant positive effects on population density but insignificant effects on the standard of living, during the time period 1—1500 CE.

PurposeThis study examines the causal relationship between information communication technology (ICT) and economic growth in high-income and middle-income Asian countries.Design/methodology/approachThis study utilises a high-quality data from 25 Asian countries from 2000 to 2018. This study presents the robustness results by employing panel cointegration and estimation procedures to account for the endogeneity and cross-sectional dependence issues.FindingsThe results illustrate that high-income Asian countries have achieved positive and significant economic development from high Internet penetration. Additionally, the middle-income countries have started to benefit from ICT Internet. The findings show that the telephone line and mobile phone penetration is highly capable of promoting economic growth in middle-income Asian countries.Practical implicationsIn high-income Asia countries, an appropriate ICT infrastructure policy will support feasible ICT penetration, which may drive the processes of economic development and innovation that contribute to economic growth. Moreover, in middle-income Asian countries, the establishment of better-quality ICT service and infrastructure is more critical. Policymakers should accommodate sufficient support to establish the ICT infrastructure and expand ICT penetration.Originality/valueThis study reveals that high-income Asian countries have been more proactive and effective than middle-income countries in embracing ICT to foster economic growth. Examining the case of high-income and middle-income Asian countries provides comprehensive insight for policymakers regarding the relevance of ICT in boosting economic growth through the advantages of technology expansion.

This paper examines the evolution of unemployment in a task-based model that allows for two types of technical change. One is automation, which turns labor tasks into mechanized ones. The second is addition of new labor tasks, which increases specialization, as in the expanding variety literature. The paper shows that in equilibrium the unemployment caused by automation converges to zero over time.