In this study, we estimate the effect of a negative labour market shock on individuals' levels of stress, anxiety, and depression. We use a dataset collected during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, on a representative sample of citizens from Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom, interviewed on three occasions. We measure stress, anxiety and depression and labour shocks using validated scales. Our research design is a standard difference-in-differences model: we leverage the differential timing of shocks to identify the impact on mental health. In our estimations, a negative labour shock increases the measure of stress, anxiety, and depression by 16% of a standard deviation computed from the baseline.

In the literature, the positive effect of ICT on labour productivity and, in general, economic growth is vast and well consolidated. This paper wants to go beyond the general term of ICT and look inside the "black box." In particular, broadband adoption among Italian firms is critical for productivity. Hence, we focus on broadband adoption and internet facilities and how they affect the firms' total factor productivity in the Italian business sector firms at NUTS2 over the period 2003-2018. Italy is indeed still characterized by a robust North-South divide. Our question is: can we exploit the digital advantage for filling the productivity gap? To answer, we are going to use a classical two-stage approach. In the first one, the TFP is filtered out using both a semi-parametric approach and a parametric one (spatial ML). The second step investigates its determinants, using broadband firms' adoption as a covariate in an ECM augmented by spatial spillovers, controlling for competitivity, internationalization, and human capital. Our results show a positive relationship between TFP and broadband adoption (cointegration), including regional spillovers; this positive effect spreads to GVA. Moreover, our results show that digitalization makes Southern regions more resilient to external shocks.

The global COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the essential role of care work in sustaining life, health, and maintaining the basics of everyday existence. It has also made visible the disproportionate burden of care work on women that existed before the outbreak, which has intensified rapidly and been gravely exposed during the pandemic. In this article, we take China as a case study to investigate the gendered impact of this pandemic and further problematize the landscape of care provision. With a feminist political economy perspective, we introduce China's provisioning of care prior to the outbreak and investigate how the care crisis has further deepened in the pandemic. Drawing on the most recent data available on China's experience, we explore the role and function of community-centered social infrastructure, an assemblage of state, family, and local resources, in effectively combating the virus and providing care. We further provide comparative international evidence to demonstrate the essential role of community care infrastructure in this pandemic. Building social infrastructure to deliver care at the community level presents important policy implication, especially for many developing countries. Therefore, a critical reflection and discussion on pandemics and women is not only more vital than ever, but also sheds light on the endeavour to develop long-term solutions for the care crisis that will almost certainly outlive the current pandemic.

Why are there so many non-teleworkable occupations? Is teleworking only a matter of ICT usage or does it also reflect the division of labour and the underlying hierarchical layers inside organizations? What does it happen to those workers not able to telework in terms of socio-economic risks, and how does the gender dimension interact with risk stratification? Hereby, we intend to shed light on these questions using a detailed integrated dataset at individual and occupational level (Indagine Campionaria delle Professioni, Indagine delle Forze di Lavoro and Inail archive) which provides information on different nature of risks (income, employment and safety). Our results entail that, first, class attributes, intended as execution of tasks, degrees of autonomy in doing the job, layers of the occupational categories, strongly influence the chance of working from home; second, those individuals who are not able to perform their work remotely are more exposed to transition to unemployment, to earn low wages, and to safety and health risks; third, being woman and employed with a temporary contract significantly amplify risk stratification.

Kerala State, India has received global attention in its response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Its response effectively attended to the health pandemic and focussed on economic relief. This paper attempts to understand how gender-responsive Kerala's policies were. Kerala's success was due to its historical preparedness and contemporary policy innovations. Over the years, public action was able to ensure that the state and the society were equipped to meet the challenges of a disaster, such as of the pandemic. In the 1990s, when India sought to limit state intervention and promote market-based solutions, public policy in Kerala shifted gears to deepen state intervention by promoting community participation and empowering women. As in other Indian States, the pandemic in Kerala too led to losses of female employment, rise in gender-based violence, a deterioration of women's mental health and rise in unequal care burdens. But Kerala's response was distinctive. Several policy interventions had foregrounded women's needs, which helped ensure gender-sensitivity in Kerala's pandemic response. Kerala's economic relief package included cash support, employment, free food provision and zero-interest loans to women. Through helplines, the government reached out and helped women report instances of violence and mental stress. The gender-sensitivity of Kerala's pandemic response is a rich guide as a demonstration of its possibilities and a reminder of the essential pre-requisites to achieve it.

How the foreign direct investment behavior of enterprises changes in response to the risks and instability of government economic policy changes is a relevant issue which, however, has not been extensively studied yet. Accordingly, this paper establishes a linear probability regression model to study the foreign direct investment behavior of Chinese A-share listed companies in 13 countries between 2003 and 2020 and explores whether multinational companies change their OFDI decisions when the economic policy environment of China and trade-related countries are unstable. A firm heterogeneity analysis and phased discussions were conducted, and a robust conclusion was finally drawn. The results show that (1) China's economic policy uncertainty promotes China's foreign direct investment, while the host country's monetary policy uncertainty inhibits China's foreign direct investment. (2) The foreign direct investment decisions of enterprises are affected not only by the macroeconomic and policy environment of the two trading countries but also by their development characteristics. (3) Sino-US trade frictions and the financial crisis have different effects on China's foreign direct investment.

The paper investigates whether standard innovation and different types of eco-innovation activities have different effects on firm employment growth. Heterogeneity in terms of growth effects is analyzed by considering how the influence of different innovation strategies varies across firms grouped by their pace of growth. Relying on a sample of 3000 Italian manufacturing firms observed between 2012 and 2016, we find that innovative companies tend to grow faster than their non-innovative counterparts. However, when distinct paces of growth are taken into account, the employment growth impact of innovation will depend on the specific types of innovation strategies pursued by companies. In particular, more complex eco-innovation activities have no impact on employment growth for high-growth firms. This finding suggests that, on average, high-growth firms tend to be too small and too young to be able to expand through more complex EI strategies which, to be handled, require a wide range of cognitive, technological, and financial capabilities.

Examining high frequency national-level panel data from Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) on paid work (employment) and unpaid work (time spent on domestic work), this paper examines the effects of the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic on the gender gaps in paid and unpaid work until December 2020, using difference-in-differences (D-I-D) for estimating the before (the pandemic) and after (the pandemic set in) effects, and event study estimates around the strict national lockdown in April 2020. The DID estimates reveal a lowering of the gender gap in employment probabilities which occurs due to the lower probability of male employment, rather than an increase in female employment. The first month of the national lockdown, April 2020, saw a large contraction in employment for both men and women, where more men lost jobs in absolute terms. Between April and August 2020 male employment recovered steadily as the economy unlocked. The event study estimates show that in August 2020, for women, the likelihood of being employed was 9% points lower than that for men, compared to April 2019, conditional on previous employment. However, by December 2020, gender gaps in employment were at the December 2019 levels. The burden of domestic chores worsened for women under the pandemic. Men spent more time on housework in April 2020 relative to December 2019, but by December 2020, the average male hours had declined to below the pre-pandemic levels, whereas women's average hours increased sharply. Time spent with friends fell sharply between December 2019 and April 2020, with a larger decline in the case of women. The hours spent with friends recovered in August 2020, to again decline by December 2020 to roughly one-third of the pre-pandemic levels. The paper adopts an intersectional lens to examine how these trends vary by social group identity.

This article examines the impact of COVID-19 on the livelihoods of widows and other single women farmers from the most backward districts of Maharashtra, a state in western India. COVID-19 led to food insecurity, loss of farm incomes, decline in employment opportunities and increased debt traps for single women farmers. The paper highlights how agrarian distress and pre-existing inequalities of class, caste and gender in access to food, incomes, credit, land, markets, and decision making, were exacerbated during the pandemic, further impoverishing these women farmers. To trace these effects, the paper draws on two types of evidence gathered in Maharashtra by MAKAAM, an informal all-India women farmer's forum: observations during multiple rounds of interactions with over a hundred women farmers during the COVID-support work of providing ration and seeds undertaken by MAKAAM during India's national lockdown in 2020, and a subsequent large-scale survey covering about a thousand women. The paper also focuses on the inadequacy of state response, both in terms of providing relief and in its ability to partner with women's collectives and grassroots organisations for better outcomes. The article makes a case for strengthening social security measures for women farmers and enhancing their access to productive resources, agricultural programmes and decision-making spaces in relevant institutions.

I propose a stochastic SIR-Macro model to study the effects of alternative mitigation policies to cope with an epidemic. Lockdowns that force firms to close and that discontinue social activities slow down the progression of the epidemic at the cost of reducing GDP and increasing debt and, on average, decrease mortality. Testing-Tracing-Quarantine policies decrease mortality at a lower cost, but they are effective only if thorough. I find that lockdowns work best in case of a bigger average family size, of a diffused labor market participation and of a bigger average firm size.

We evaluate the impact that the economic freedom exerts on the shadow economy for a sample of 152 countries from 1995 to 2017. In order to solve endogeneity issues, we rely on an instrumental variable approach and find that a change in the economic freedom index, induced by the level of independence of financial markets from government actions, adversely affects the hidden economy. To corroborate the interpretation of our results we also show how each subcomponent of the economic freedom index explains the downward change registered in the shadow economy. Further, the negative effect is mainly found in countries characterized by a low level of democracy and strong corruption, whereas in more democratic and less corrupt countries the economic freedom positively affects the size of the shadow economy. Consistent with these findings, we also highlight that the effect of the composite indicator of economic freedom on the hidden economy is U-shaped and this relationship is exclusively driven by both business regulation and the freedom in the legal system and property rights.

This paper aims to explain labour productivity through the lens of a Kaldorian perspective. To assess the relationship between output, demand, capital accumulation, and labour productivity, we apply Panel Structural Vector Autoregressive (P-SVAR) modelling to a dataset of 52 countries observed over a long-time span as provided by the Penn World Table. Findings validate the Kaldorian perspective and show that demand shocks-measured by government expenditures and exports-produce positive and persistent effects on labour productivity. Findings are confirmed even when the full sample is broken down to consider developed and developing countries separately.

The Covid-19 crisis has radically changed the game for world and EU-economies, and urged for a reappraisal of the guidelines for a healthy management of public expenditure. This requires a deep rethinking of the role of public debt in modern capitalistic economies and of efficient, equitable and politically viable ways of financing it. This paper outlines the main operating framework of a Debt Agency tasked with the management of the Eurozone sovereign debts and the creation of a truly European safe asset. The framework leverages on the potential irredeemable nature of sovereign debts in order to build a common bond. By structurally filtering liquidity risk, the Debt Agency can price the Member States' funding costs by referring only to their credit risk, as defined by EU agreed rules. The common bond issued by the Debt Agency thus avoids mutualisation by design; hence, it can be directly bought by the ECB. Due to its structural intertemporal sustainability, the Debt Agency's framework delineated in this paper can serve as a benchmark for institutional and political decisions. In this perspective, a counterfactual exercise has been conducted in order to evaluate the future potential impact of the Debt Agency as well as the past distortions in market pricing of Member States' fundamental risk due to market mispricing of the liquidity risk.

By shaping the way people look at members of their networks as well as strangers, social capital affects the behavior of a population during a pandemic. Over the course of 2020, various countries implemented non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI), imposing restrictions that were difficult to enforce (due to the scale of the policies) in order to protect the public from the threat of COVID-19. This is an interesting quasi-experimental setting in which to test the compliance of populations with different levels of social capital with government suggestions and prescriptions. With the help of European Social Survey data, and the John Hopkins University dataset on the spread of COVID-19 around the world, the present work aims to test the impact within a sample of European countries with different social capital stocks on the spread of coronavirus. The results show that countries with higher social capital have fewer COVID-19 cases, for NPI. This is especially true if this capital is of the bonding kind.

Pandemics tend to have disruptive and uneven impacts on different population subgroups and across sectors. This paper investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women scientists from the Global South to understand their resilience and adaptation strategies, utilising data from a survey of women in STEM fields, who are members of the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World (OWSD). We employ a mixed-methods approach to examine the effects of the pandemic on the respondents' work and employment, home and family lives, and mental well-being. We find that the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the requirement to change practices in academia, indeed in all spheres of social and economic life, have provided a unique and most timely opportunity to observe, evaluate and revise what might be termed the current gender-limited environment for career progression for researchers in STEM subjects and instead create a gender-transformative environment that will have a profound effect on how scientific research is managed and undertaken in the world.

Understanding the type of immigration flow that maximises the expected economic benefits in the destination countries is one of the main debated topics both in the economic literature and in policy agendas worldwide. In recent years, governments have developed regulations of migration flows by adopting some form of selective immigration policy based on either human capital criteria or skill needs. Admission policies in the destination countries are likely to affect the direction and magnitude of selection as well as the socio-economic performance of immigrants. However, the relationship between quality-selective policy and immigrants' skill composition remains largely unexplored. This paper aims to survey the existing literature on how selective-immigration policies shape the characteristics of immigrants from the receiving-country perspective. First, it introduces the main route of admissions and the theoretical models to understand how the direction of selection works; second, it discusses the theoretical models; third, it reviews the empirical works. A final concluding section briefly points out the actual findings and future avenues of work.

We analyze the impact of government size, measured by total spending per capita, on tax evasion at the provincial level in Italy over the period 2001-2015. In order to solve endogeneity issues we rely on a system GMM and find that public expenditure negatively affects tax evasion, as taxpayers perceive the government is efficiently spending resources coming from the tax levy. Results are confirmed when we (1) consider expenditures related to long-term investments, namely capital spending per capita, and (2) directly test the impact of government efficiency on tax evasion. In addition, we show that the impact of public spending is heterogeneous across geographical areas: an increase in public expenditure leads to a downward shift in tax evasion only in the northern part of Italy, characterized by a relatively larger initial level of public goods provision.

This article draws on the work of Just Associates (JASS), a feminist movement support organisation that strengthens the leadership and organising capacity of community-based women networks in Southern Africa, Southeast Asia, and Mesoamerica, to transform the structures that perpetuate inequality and violence. We analyse qualitative interviews and surveys drawn from recipients of the JASS mobilisation fund (JMF), an innovative financial crisis support mechanism for feminist movements. We argue that localisation strategies deployed by women's networks supported by the JMF in response to COVID-19, challenge dominant humanitarian responses that de-centre feminist movements, local knowledge, and expertise. By accounting for local knowledge generated from long histories of movement building, building collective power, and challenging racialised and gendered responses to humanitarian crises, women's collectives and networks supported through the JMF developed contextually relevant responses that challenge patriarchal structural barriers heightened by COVID-19.

This paper argues that the gendered impact of COVID-19 has both visible and hidden dimensions, and both immediate effects linked with lockdowns and longer-term effects that are likely to emerge sequentially in time and affect recovery. Much of the existing feminist literature on the impact of COVID-19 has neglected these complexities and focused mainly on care work and domestic violence. This has diverted attention away from other key concerns such as livelihood loss, food and nutritional insecurity, indebtedness, rising poverty, and the low resilience of most women in developing economies. Even care work and domestic violence have complex facets that tend to be missed. Using examples from India, the paper outlines the kinds of gendered effects we might expect, the extent to which these have been traced in existing surveys, and the data gaps. It also highlights the potential of group approaches in enhancing women's economic recovery and providing social protection from the worst outcomes of the pandemic-approaches that could guide us towards effective policy pathways for 'building back better.'