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Office of the Chief Economist, South Asia Region

Recent Research

The Office of the Chief Economist brings together knowledge and expertise across major sectors of development. We seek to produce and feature papers that provides sustainable and innovative solutions for the development challenges, with a focus on South Asian countries and beyond.

2024

Education, Social Norms, and the Marriage Penalty: Evidence from South Asia
Maurizio Bussolo, Jonah Rexer & Margaret Triyana

Household and Firm Exposure to Heat and Floods in South Asia
Patrick Behrer, Jonah Rexer, Siddharth Sharma & Margaret Triyana

Jobless Development
Franziska Ohnsorge, Richard Rogerson & Zoe Leiyu Xie

Social Norms and Gender Disparities with a Focus on Female Labor Force Participation in South Asia
Maurizio Bussolo, Jessy Amarachi Ezebuihe, Ana Maria Muñoz Boudet, Stavros Poupakis, Tasmia Rahman & Nayantara Sarma

Evaluating the Impacts of Access to a Digital Jobs Platform and Skills Training on Female Domestic Workers
Maurizio Bussolo, S Anukriti, Jean Lee, Siddharth Sharma & Anaise Williams

Climate Change Adaptation: What Does the Evidence Say?
Jonah Rexer & Siddharth Sharma

Optimal Unemployment Insurance and Costly Self-Control
Zoe Xie & Pei Cheng Yu

Climate Shocks and the Poor: A Review of the Literature
Margaret Triyana, Weicheng Jiang, Yurui Hu & Md Shah Naoaj

2023

Falling Long-Term Growth Prospects
Franziska Ohnsorge & M. Ayhan Kose

Long-term evolution of inequality of opportunity: Educated parents still matter
Maurizio Bussolo, Daniele Checchi & Vito Peragine

The evolution of job tenure in transition economies
Maurizio Bussolo, Michael M. Lokshin, Nicolás Oviedo & Iván Torre

Political connections and firms: network dimensions
Maurizio Bussolo, Simon Commander & Stavros Poupakis

Explaining the Evolution of Job Tenure in Europe, 1995–2020
Maurizio Bussolo, Damien Capelle, Michael M. Lokshin, Iván Torre & Hernan Winkler

Slowing Growth: More Than a Rough Patch
Franziska Ohnsorge & M. Ayhan Kose

Potential Growth: A Global Database
Franziska Ohnsorge, Sinem Kilic Celik, M. Ayhan Kose & Franz Ruch

Potential Growth Prospects: Risks, Rewards, and Policies
Franziska Ohnsorge, Sinem Kilic Celik & M. Ayhan Kose

Understanding the Global Drivers of Inflation: How Important are Oil Prices? 
Franziska Ohnsorge, Jongrim Ha, M. Ayhan Kose & Hakan Yilmazkuday

Election-induced fiscal policy cycles in emerging market and developing economies
Franziska Ohnsorge, Jakob De Haan & Shu Yu

What Explains Global Inflation
Franziska Ohnsorge, Jongrim Ha, Ayhan Kose & Hakan Yilmazkuday

Forecasting Industrial Commodity Prices : Literature Review and a Model Suite
Franziska Ohnsorge, Francisco Arroyo-Marioli, Jeetendra Khadan & Takefumi Yamazaki

The Distributional Impact of Inflation in South Asia: An Empirical Approach
Vanessa Olakemi Dovonou & Zoe Leiyu Xie

Are Carbon Taxes Good for South Asia?
Valerie Mercer-Blackman, Lazar Milivojevic & Victor Mylonas

Natural Disasters and Fiscal Drought
Lazar Milivojevic

The links between COVID-19 vaccine acceptance and non-pharmaceutical interventions
Maurizio Bussolo, Nayantara Sarma & Iván Torre

How Selling Online Is Affecting Informal Firms in South Asia
Maurizio Bussolo, Akshay Dixit, Anne Golla, Ananya Kotia, Jean N. Lee, Prema Narasimhan & Siddharth Sharma

2022

The Short and the Long of it: Stock-Flow Matching in the US Housing Market
Zoe Xie, Eric Smith & Lei Fang

A Quantitative Analysis of CARES Act Unemployment Insurance
Zoe Xie, Lei Fang & Jun Nie

Social Norms and Gender Equality
Maurizio Bussolo, Jessy Amarachi Ezebuihe, Ana Maria Munoz Boudet, Stavros Poupakis, Tasmia Rahman & Nayantara Sarma

A Dynamic Model of Fiscal Decentralization and Public Debt Accumulation
Zoe Xie, Si Guo & Yun Pei

Dynamics and synchronization of global equilibrium interest rates
Robert C. M. Beyer & Lazar Milivojevic

Trade Agreements in South Asia: Towards a Successful Story in the Developing World
Sebastian Franco Bedoya

2021

Politically connected firms and privileged access to credit: Evidence from Central and Eastern Europe
Maurizio Bussolo, Francesca de Nicola, Ugo Panizza & Richard Varghese

I Perceive Therefore I Demand: The Formation of Inequality Perceptions and Demand for Redistribution
Maurizio Bussolo, Ada Ferrer-i-Carbonell, Anna Giolbas & Iván Torre

Understanding FDI Spillovers in the Presence of GVCs
Valerie Mercer-Blackman, Wei Xiang & Fahad Khan

The Impact of United States Tax Policies on Sectoral Foreign Direct Investment to Asia
Valerie Mercer-Blackman & Sheila Camingue

The Causal Effects of Long-Term PM2.5 Exposure on COVID-19 in India
Takahiro Yamada, Hiroyuki Yamada & Muthukumara Mani

Poverty and Migration in the Digital Age: Experimental Evidence on Mobile Banking in Bangladesh
Jean N. Lee, Jonathan Morduch, Saravana Ravindran, Abu Shonchoy & Hassan Zaman

It takes two (to make things right): Women's Empowerment and Couple Concordance in South Asia
Maurizio Bussolo, Nayantara Sarma & Anaise Williams

Narrowing the gender gap in mobile banking
Jean N.Lee, Jonathan Morduch, Saravana Ravindran & Abu S.Shonchoy

Workers at Risk: Panel Data Evidence on the COVID-19 Labor Market Crisis in India
Maurizio Bussolo, Ananya Kotia & Siddharth Sharma

2020

Feeling Poor, Feeling Rich, Or Feeling Middle-Class: An Empirical Investigation
Maurizio Bussolo, Mathilde Lebrand & Ivan Torre

Global Inequality in a more educated world
Maurizio Bussolo, Amer Ahmed, Marcio Cruz, Delfin S. Go & Israel Osorio-Rodarte

The Drivers of Firms' Compliance to Environmental Regulations: The Case of India
Sebastian Franco-Bedoya & Muthukumara Mani

Regional Integration in South Asia: Implications for Green Growth, Female Labor Force Participation, and the Gender Wage Gap
Muthukumara Mani, Badri Narayanan Gopalakrishnan & Deepika Wadhwa

Valuing Unpaid Care Work in Bhutan
Valerie Mercer-Blackman, Jooyeoun Suh, Changa Dorji & Aimee Hampel-Milagrosa

Migration, externalities, and the diffusion of COVID-19 in South Asia
Jean N.Lee, Mahreen Mahmud, Jonathan Morduch, Saravana Ravindran & Abu S.Shonchoy

Fiscal policy and economic activity in South Asia
Robert C. M. Beyer & Lazar Milivojevic

Lights Out ? COVID-19 Containment Policies and Economic Activity
Robert C. M. Beyer, Tarun Jain & Sonalika Sinha 

Examining the Economic Impact of COVID-19 in India through Daily Electricity Consumption and Nighttime Light Intensity
Robert C. M. Beyer, Sebastian Franco-Bedoya & Virgilio Galdo

2019

Vertical and Horizontal Redistribution: Evidence from Europe
Maurizio Bussolo, Carla Krolage, Mattia Makovec, Andreas Peichl, Marc Stöckli, Iván Torre & Christian Wittneben

Employment in South Asia: A New Dataset
Robert C. M. Beyer, Milagros Chocce & Martin Rama

Fiscal Policy and Economic Activity in South Asia
Robert C. M. Beyer & Lazar Milivojevic

Inflation Dynamics and Global Value Chains
Sebastian Franco Bedoya & François de Soyres

2018

Toward a New Social Contract: Taking on Distributional Tensions in Europe and Central Asia
Maurizio Bussolo, María E. Dávalos, Vito Peragine & Ramya Sundaram

Paris Climate Agreement and the Global Economy: Winners and Losers
Muthukumara Mani, Deepika Wadhwa, Zekarias Hussein & Badri Narayanan Gopalakrishnan

Does Job Polarization Explain the Rise in Earnings Inequality? Evidence from Europe
Maurizio Bussolo, Ivan Torre & Hernan Winkler

Wider Economic Benefits of Investments in Transport Corridors and the Role of Complementary Policies
Siddharth Sharma, Martin Melecky & Hari Subhash

Measuring districts' monthly economic activity from outer space
Robert C. M. Beyer, Esha Chhabra, Virgilio Galdo & Martin Rama

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