Available online: https://norden.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2:1456194 In 2020, the long-term crisis of climate change has been temporarily overshadowed by the COVID-19 emergency, pushing many governments into deep budget deficits. As countries mobilize funds to fight the pandemic and bolster their economies, it cannot be ignored that whatever measures are put in place to recover from the current crisis must not undermine efforts to tackle the longer term threat of climate change. Article 2.1.c of the Paris Agreement on climate change: “making finance flows consistent with a pathway toward low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development”, applies just as much now as before. This working paper explores how two fiscal tools, fossil fuel subsidies (FFS) and carbon pricing — putting a price on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through taxation or carbon markets, influence the signal sent to the market to align economic development with climate constraints. Fossil fuel subsidies act as a negative price on carbon and increase the risk of locking investment in fossil fuels that are incompatible with the low-carbon transition required to meet the Paris Agreement’s objectives. As we document in the report, the current coverage and levels of carbon pricing are also deeply insufficient to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement limiting the increase of the global average temperature to “well below 2°C” while “pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees C. This Working Paper explores the interplay between FFS reform and carbon pricing at the international and national levels. We note that effective carbon pricing, promoted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the International Monetary Fund, is a valuable tool to send effective carbon mitigation signals to the market. However, without including the impact of fossil fuel subsidies, these analyses present only a partial picture. These findings highlight the importance of increasing implicit and explicit carbon prices and reforming fossil fuel subsidies. In the context of the COVID-19 emergency, it is essential that governments, in a hurry to take action to boost their economies, don’t overlook the need to keep recovery stimulus policies aligned with climate goals.

The latest World Energy Outlook offers the most comprehensive analysis of what this transformation of the energy sector might look like, thanks to its energy projections to 2040. It reviews the key opportunities and challenges ahead for renewable energy, the central pillar of the low- carbon energy transition, as well as the critical role for energy efficiency.

This publication serves as a roadmap for exploring and managing climate risk in the U.S. financial system. It is the first major climate publication by a U.S. financial regulator. The central message is that U.S. financial regulators must recognize that climate change poses serious emerging risks to the U.S. financial system, and they should move urgently and decisively to measure, understand, and address these risks. Achieving this goal calls for strengthening regulators’ capabilities, expertise, and data and tools to better monitor, analyze, and quantify climate risks. It calls for working closely with the private sector to ensure that financial institutions and market participants do the same. And it calls for policy and regulatory choices that are flexible, open-ended, and adaptable to new information about climate change and its risks, based on close and iterative dialogue with the private sector. At the same time, the financial community should not simply be reactive—it should provide solutions. Regulators should recognize that the financial system can itself be a catalyst for investments that accelerate economic resilience and the transition to a net-zero emissions economy. Financial innovations, in the form of new financial products, services, and technologies, can help the U.S. economy better manage climate risk and help channel more capital into technologies essential for the transition. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5247742

The 2018 Macroeconomic Report, A Mandate to Grow, revisits the growth debate that has been raging in the region for the past half century. Viewing the debate from this long-term perspective allows for a focus on the structural factors that have prevented Latin America and the Caribbean from reaching the growth potential required to keep pace with faster growing regions and to fulfill the aspirations of its population.

The world economy is experiencing a very strong but uneven recovery, with many emerging market and developing economies facing obstacles to vaccination. The global outlook remains uncertain, with major risks around the path of the pandemic and the possibility of financial stress amid large debt loads. Policy makers face a difficult balancing act as they seek to nurture the recovery while safeguarding price stability and fiscal sustainability. A comprehensive set of policies will be required to promote a strong recovery that mitigates inequality and enhances environmental sustainability, ultimately putting economies on a path of green, resilient, and inclusive development. Prominent among the necessary policies are efforts to lower trade costs so that trade can once again become a robust engine of growth. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Global Economic Prospects. The Global Economic Prospects is a World Bank Group Flagship Report that examines global economic developments and prospects, with a special focus on emerging market and developing economies, on a semiannual basis (in January and June). Each edition includes analytical pieces on topical policy challenges faced by these economies.

The Asia-Pacific region was the first to be hit by the COVID-19 pandemic; it put a strain on its people and economies, and policymaking became exceptionally difficult. This departmental paper contains the assessment of the key challenges facing Asia at this critical juncture and policy advice to the region both to address the current challenges and to build the foundations for a more sustainable and inclusive future. The paper focuses on (1) adjusting to the COVID-19 shock, (2) using unconventional policies when policy space is limited, (3) dealing with debt, and (4) helping the vulnerable and greening the recovery. The paper first presents the different ways countries are adjusting to the COVID-19 shock.

This unique volume offers a definitive new history of European economies at war from 1914 to 1918. It studies how European economies mobilised for war, how existing economic institutions stood up under the strain, how economic development influenced outcomes and how wartime experience influenced post-war economic growth. Leading international experts provide the first systematic comparison of economies at war between 1914 and 1918 based on the best available data for Britain, Germany, France, Russia, the USA, Italy, Turkey, Austria-Hungary and the Netherlands. The editors' overview draws some stark lessons about the role of economic development, the importance of markets and the damage done by nationalism and protectionism. A companion volume to the acclaimed The Economics of World War II, this is a major contribution to our understanding of total war.

The clock is relentlessly ticking! Our world teeters on a knife-edge between a peaceful and prosperous future for all, and a dark winter of death and destruction that threatens to smother the light of civilization. Within 30 years, in the 2030 decade, six powerful 'drivers' will converge with unprecedented force in a statistical spike that could tear humanity apart and plunge the world into a new Dark Age. Depleted fuel supplies, massive population growth, poverty, global climate change, famine, growing water shortages and international lawlessness are on a crash course with potentially catastrophic consequences. In the face of both doomsaying and denial over the state of our world, Colin Mason cuts through the rhetoric and reams of conflicting data to muster the evidence to illustrate a broad picture of the world as it is, and our possible futures. Ultimately his message is clear; we must act decisively, collectively and immediately to alter the trajectory of humanity away from catastrophe. Offering over 100 priorities for immediate action, The 2030 Spike serves as a guidebook for humanity through the treacherous minefields and wastelands ahead to a bright, peaceful and prosperous future in which all humans have the opportunity to thrive and build a better civilization. This book is powerful and essential reading for all people concerned with the future of humanity and planet earth.

The coronavirus pandemic that has rocked China since December 2019 has posed a gruelling test for the resilience of the country’s national economy. Now, as China emerges from its Covid-induced “recession”, it feels like the worst is behind it. How did China manage to come out almost unscathed from the worst crisis in over a century?This Report examines how China designed and implemented its post-Covid recovery strategy, focussing on both the internal and external challenges the country had to face over the short- and medium-run.The book offers a comprehensive argument suggesting that, despite China having lost economic and political capital during the crisis, Beijing seems to have been strengthened by the “pandemic test”, thus becoming an even more challenging “partner, competitor and rival” for Western countries.

"The Corona crisis and the Need for a Great Reset" is a guide for anyone who wants to understand how COVID-19 disrupted our social and economic systems, and what changes will be needed to create a more inclusive, resilient and sustainable world going forward. Thierry Malleret, founder of the Monthly Barometer, and Klaus Schwab, founder and executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, explore what the root causes of these crisis were, and why they lead to a need for a Great Reset.Theirs is a worrying, yet hopeful analysis. COVID-19 has created a great disruptive reset of our global social, economic, and political systems. But the power of human beings lies in being foresighted and having the ingenuity, at least to a certain extent, to take their destiny into their hands and to plan for a better future. This is the purpose of this book: to shake up and to show the deficiencies which were manifest in our global system, even before COVID broke out.