Ideas to Action:

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An image showing a person holding a phone and receiving a message that they have a COVID vaccine certificate.
February 11, 2021

A COVID Vaccine Certificate: Building on Lessons from Digital ID for the Digital Yellow Card

COVID-19 vaccination efforts are well and truly underway across the world. In addition to those in Europe and North America, vaccination campaigns are gathering pace across China, India, Russia, and the Middle East, though lagging in many other, mostly poor, countries. As more start scaling up their own programs and the number of vaccinated people increases over the coming year, a COVID Vaccine Certificate is likely to become an important tool to help monitor and manage the rollout of vaccinations and get national economies back on track.

February 9, 2021

Financing a Possible Expansion of the IMF’s Support for LICs

The IMF’s concessional support for low-income countries (LICs) is provided primarily through the Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust (PRGT). Since the start of the pandemic, lending from the PRGT has risen very sharply in response to the unprecedented and urgent needs of LICs; total PRGT credit outstanding nearly doubled during 2020 to far exceed past peaks. This note considers possible financing sources, taking into account legal, political, and practical constraints including the timeliness with which different resources could be mobilized.

February 4, 2021

How Might an SDR Allocation Be Better Tailored to Support Low-Income Countries?

Since Covid-19 emerged there have been numerous calls for an allocation of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) as part of a broader effort to assist low-income countries (LICs) in dealing with the fallout from the pandemic. So far, these calls have been thwarted by political opposition from some of the IMF’s shareholders, in part because SDR allocations are not well-targeted towards LICs or developing countries in general.

The cover of the note
February 3, 2021

Social Protection During the Pandemic: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico

The pandemic, people’s response to fend off contagion, and the measures designed to contain the spread of the virus took an enormous toll on the region’s living standards. Governments faced the challenge of reaching three groups of people: formal sector workers in social security (and their dependents), recipients of existing non-contributory cash transfer programs and their dependents, and finally, households whose members were reliant on labor income from the informal sector and were part of neither social protection system.

An image of greenhouse gas emissions
January 13, 2021

Valuing Climate Liability

This note looks at cumulative historical emissions but adds two adjustments to quantify countries’ liability for climate damage. First, we use recent thinking on carbon prices to cost emissions. Second, we allow that cost to fall for historic emissions and include a cut-off to reflect the rising certainty of climate damage.

A close-up of two people exchanging Nigerian Naira in a transaction.
December 21, 2020

E-commerce and Mobile Money for Poverty Reduction in China: Lessons for African Countries

Global e-commerce sales surged to US$25.6 trillion in 2018, up 8 percent from 2017. Leading the way are China (US$1.5 trillion), the United States (US$600 billion), and the United Kingdom (US$135 billion) holding the top three spots respectively. Yet Africa, with 17 percent of the world’s population, still lags behind both in e-commerce sales and the use of mobile money for online purchases. Why is this a problem?

Leah Lynch and Chung Tsz Chung
Cover of working paper 563
December 17, 2020

The Education Impacts of Cash Transfers for Children with Multiple Indicators of Vulnerability

This study draws on a randomly assigned pilot of a community implemented cash transfer program targeted to households with low socioeconomic status in Tanzania to examine the educational impacts of cash transfers for children facing different challenges. We find that on average, being assigned to receive cash transfers significantly boosts children’s school participation and primary completion rates. But we provide suggestive evidence that these gains are unequally distributed across children.

The cover of the case study
December 16, 2020

From Displacement to Development: How Peru Can Transform Venezuelan Displacement into Shared Growth

This case study is part of the “Let Them Work” initiative by Refugees International (RI) and the Center for Global Development (CGD). It outlines the barriers Venezuelans face in Peru to economic inclusion, the impacts of these barriers, and the steps that the Government of Peru, international organizations, donors, and the private sector could take to overcome them.

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