Economics & Global Affairs

The budget crisis will hit big due to the coronavirus when a new fiscal year begins July 1.

As economies begin to orient themselves towards recovery and growth in a post-COVID-19 era, they will first need to disentangle themselves from their prior bedfellows, the state, whose courtship was necessary for survival during the pandemic.  Such bedfellow relationships have become increasingly common as government intervention is urgently needed for economic stabilization. Governments have also embraced their new role with vigor. According to the IMF, as of April 2020, countries have committed around $8 trillion to combat the pandemic and to remedy its ill effects on economies and societies. Decisions about how this money will be spent will undoubtedly recalibrate the logic of capitalism for years to come. 

For months, the coronavirus has crawled across the globe. One person at a time, it has passed through millions, reaching every corner of the earth. And it has not only infected people, but every aspect of our human cultures. Policymakers and the public sector face their biggest test in generations—some say ever—as lives and livelihoods hang in a terrible, delicate balance. Facing health crises, economic collapse, social and political disruption, we try to take stock of what the pandemic has done and will do. We asked Harvard Kennedy School faculty, in fields ranging from climate change to international development, from democracy to big power relations, to tell us how this epochal event has changed the world.

A report released last month by the Treasury Department’s inspector general estimated that the amount of lost revenue was nearly $50 billion between 2014 and 2016 alone — an outrage at a time of soaring deficits and growing needs.

Given China's failure to follow through on the marketization policies that it announced seven years ago, it is reasonable to be suspicious of the government's latest reform push. Much will depend on what Chinese leaders fear more: disruptive change, or a creeping malaise of their own making.

On 8 June, the business cycle dating committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research declared that economic activity in the US had peaked in February 2020, formally marking the start of a recession. But we already knew that we were in a recession that had likely begun around that date. So, why does the NBER’s formal declaration matter?

It is no secret that measures of employment fell sharply from February to March. Real (inflation-adjusted) personal consumption expenditure (PCE) and real personal income before transfers both peaked in February as well. Official measures of GDP are released only quarterly but the economic free-fall in late March was enough to pull first-quarter GDP growth down to an annualized rate of -4.8% (relative to the last quarter of 2019).

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is an important cooperative framework that increasingly affects the global economy, trade, and emission patterns. However, most existing studies pay insufficient attention to consumption-based emissions, embodied emissions, and non-CO2 greenhouse gases (GHGs). This study constructs a GHG emissions database to study the trends and variations in production-based, consumption-based, and embodied emissions associated with BRI countries

This policy brief describes the persistent challenge of poor electricity reliability in India and how it interacts with key regulatory policies, analyzes Delhi’s experience with outage compensation since 2017, and highlights areas for additional economic and policy research on this topic.

CGTN host Tian Wei had an in-depth talk with Allison, who wrote the book "Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides' Trap?" which unpacks whether China and the U.S. can avoid direct confrontation against each other. 

5G mobile networks with ultra fast data speed are critical because they support the most advanced 21st century technology including faster Internet, smart cities, and driverless cars.