This paper estimates public sector service efficiency in England at the sub-regional level, studying changes post crisis during the large fiscal consolidation effort. It finds that despite the overall spending cut (and some caveats owing to data availability), efficiency broadly improved across sectors, particularly in education. However, quality adjustments and other factors could have contributed (e.g., sector and technology-induced reforms). It also finds that sub-regions with the weakest initial levels of efficiency converged the most post crisis. These sub-regional changes in public sector efficiency are associated with changes in labor productivity. Finally, the paper finds that regional disparities in the productivity of public services have narrowed, especially in the education and health sectors, with education attainment, population density, private spending on high school education and class size being to be the most important factors explaining sub-regional variation since 2003.

After a good performance until 2016, growth slowed in the first half of 2017. The unemployment rate has fallen to below 4.5%, but real wages are in a downward trend. Planned Brexit has raised uncertainty and dented business investment. Negotiating the closest possible EU-UK economic relationship...

We build and estimate open economy two-bloc DSGE models to study the transmission and impact of shocks in Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom. After accounting for country-specific fiscal and monetary sectors, we estimate their key policy and structural parameters. Our findings suggest that not only has output responded differently to shocks due to differing levels of diversification and structural and policy settings, but also the responses to fiscal consolidation differ: Russia would benefit from a smaller state foot-print, while in Saudi Arabia, unless this is accompanied by structural reforms that remove rigidities, output would fall. We also find that lower oil prices need not be bad news given more oil-intensive production structures. However, lower oil prices have hurt these oil producers as their public finances depend heavily on oil, among other factors. Productivity gains accompanied by ambitious structural reforms, along with fiscal and monetary reforms could support these economies to achieve better outcomes when oil prices fall, including via diversifying exports.

The Summer 2017 issue of the IMF Research Bulletin highlights new research such as recent IMF Working Papers and Staff Discussion Notes. The Research Summaries are “Structural Reform Packages, Sequencing, and the Informal Economy (by Zsuzsa Munkacsi and Magnus Saxegaard) and “A Broken Social Contract, Not High Inequality Led to the Arab Spring” (by Shantayanan Devarajan and Elena Ianchovichina). The Q&A section features “Seven Questions on Fintech” (by Tommaso Mancini-Griffoli). The Bulletin also includes information on recommended titles from IMF Publications and the latest articles from the IMF Economic Review.

"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.

The UK’s departure from the EU has profoundly affected the politics and economics of Northern Ireland. Brexit has shattered a political accommodation that was taking shape in the region that involved nationalism and unionism refraining from aggressively pursuing their own objectives or making excessive demands on each other. Economically, it has made the task of building an innovative economy in the region immeasurably more difficult. Without radical change, Northern Ireland is destined to be an economic outhouse of an under-performing UK economy. This book represents the first systematic study of the impact of Brexit on the political and economic future of Northern Ireland and Ireland. It provides a detailed assessment of the consequences of the Belfast Agreement and highlights how Brexit imperils the advances that have been made since its signing in 1998. It makes a dispassionate assessment of the changes that may be necessary to create a stronger Northern Ireland economy. On the one hand, demands for the immediate unification of Ireland that are now being made loudly and persistently by nationalists and republicans are considered too precipitous. The two economies on the island are not yet ready for Irish unity. On the other hand, the book argues the case for a radical reorientation of the Northern Ireland economy through the incremental creation of an all-Ireland economy. The book cuts through the rhetoric that characterizes so much discussion about the Northern Ireland economy and provides a hard-headed appraisal of not only its structure and performance, but also the economic feasibility of Irish unity.

Long-running trends towards increasing inequality between the rich and poor across Europe have been exacerbated by the 2008 global financial crisis and its aftermath. As employment opportunities for young people diminish and as the welfare state is pulled back, pathways to adulthood change and become more difficult to navigate. Transitions to Adulthood Through Recession consists of a collection of papers by researchers from Britain, Norway, Germany, Portugal, Italy and Greece, locating young people’s transitions to adulthood in their national social, economic and political contexts. It explores young adulthood with reference to generational continuity and change and intergenerational support. With a cross-national comparative framework, this volume highlights the importance of variations in structural contexts for young people’s transitions. Bringing together authors across sub-disciplines such as the sociology of youth, family and kinship, class and inequality and life-course studies, Transitions to Adulthood Through Recession will appeal to academic social scientists as well as final-year undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in fields such as political science, sociology, youth studies, social policy, anthropology and psychology; and a wider public readership. Chapter 1 of this book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license

Lesotho's economy has continued to perform well under the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) arrangement despite adverse weather conditions and the regional food shortage. Executive Directors welcomed the strategy to achieve higher and sustainable economic growth, reduce poverty, and improve social conditions by creating private sector developments and labor-intensive industries. They appreciated the monetary and fiscal policies, the integration of PRGF objectives with the budget, and the improvement in the tax system. They emphasized the need to accelerate structural reforms and supported the Anti-Corruption Unit.

3. Investing in people.