Economic Crises and the Returns to University Education (News and Research 222)
Economic Crises and Returns to University Education in Middle-Income Countries: Stylized Facts and COVID-19 Projections | The rate of return to university education increases during crises. New working paper with Tazeen Fasih, Najeeb Shafiq documents stylized facts on rates of returns to education during economic crises. It shows from three middle-income countries—Indonesia, Pakistan, and South Africa—that the rate of return to university education (versus secondary education) has increased during economic crises. Based on this stylized fact, the paper projects that the returns for university graduates may increase by at least one-quarter to one-third during the COVID-19……
Will COVID-19 fiscal recovery packages accelerate or retard progress on climate change? | Cameron Hepburn, Brian O’Callaghan, Nicholas Stern, Joseph Stiglitz, Dimitri Zenghelis | Forthcoming in Oxford Review of Economic Policy 36(S1) | The COVID-19 crisis is likely to have dramatic consequences for progress on climate change. Imminent fiscal recovery packages could entrench or partly displace the current fossil-fuel-intensive economic system. Here, we survey 231 central bank officials, finance ministry officials, and other economic experts from G20 countries on the relative performance of 25 major fiscal recovery archetypes across four dimensions: speed of implementation, economic multiplier, climate impact potential, and overall desirability. We identify five policies with high potential on both economic multiplier and climate impact metrics: clean physical infrastructure, building efficiency retrofits, investment in education and training, natural capital investment, and clean R&D. In lower- and middle-income countries (LMICs) rural support spending is of particular value while clean R&D is less important. These recommendations are contextualized through analysis of the short-run impacts of COVID-19 on greenhouse gas curtailment and plausible medium-run shifts in the habits and behaviors of humans and institutions…
Post-COVID education in Kazakhstan: Heavy losses and deepening inequality | Jean-François Marteau | In my nearly two decades with the World Bank, I have worked through several crises. And yet the latest estimations on the social and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic everywhere in the world have left me in utter disbelief. Where I sit in Nur Sultan, Kazakhstan, it is too early to tell the consequences of the virus in many areas, but it is already clear that the impact on student learning will be devastating…
2020 Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals | Learning poverty: children’s education in crisis
Vietnam’s Human Capital: Education Success and Future Challenges
Education, economics and public policy 