A new Oxfam analysis found that between March 2021 and March 2022, 87 percent (13/15) of IMF loan programs to middle and low income countries required austerity measures. The measures including raising regressive taxes (only a few programs include raising progressive taxes such as increasing corporate tax and only one…

A new report by The World Bank Group and the Development Research Center of the State Council of The People’s Republic of China titled Four Decades of Poverty Reduction in China seeks to explain the causes of China’s rapid economic transformation and the near eradication of extreme poverty. Since the…

The World Bank published the 2022 version of the annual World Development Report that explores the mitigation of financial risks to promote a global economic recovery. The World Bank reports that high income countries had far larger fiscal responses than low income countries. High income countries were also apply to…

World social and economic experts John F. Helliwell, Richard Layard, Jeffrey D. Sachs, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Lara B. Aknin, and Shun Wang published the 2022 World Happiness Report to evaluate wellbeing across countries. The authors use measures for GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity, and corruption…

According to a new paper by Hickel and others, “in 2015 the North net appropriated from the South 12 billion tons of embodied raw material equivalents, 822 million hectares of embodied land, 21 exajoules of embodied energy, and 188 million person-years of embodied labour, worth $10.8 trillion in Northern prices…

The Covid-19 pandemic has presented new challenges for governments around the world. While some countries have been able to cushion the pandemic’s blow to the economy through large increases in government spending, the same can not be said for many others. A study by Alexander Kentikelenis and Thomas Stubbs investigated…

Covid-19 has revealed the stark inequalities that exist around the world. Burdensome debt payments, the unequal distribution of vaccines, and inadequate social spending have undermined an equitable global recovery. To outline what a comprehensive global recovery plan could look like the Tricontinental Institute along with over twenty other research institutions…

It’s been a year since the D.C. based nonprofit Social Progress Imperative published the 2020 edition of their annual Social Progress Index. This month, the Social Progress Imperative released the 2021 edition that expanded the list of countries ranked from 163 to 168. Released every year since 2011, the…

Around the world, 72 countries are at risk of a major debt crisis while 19 countries are “severely vulnerable”. High debt burdens among developing countries have limited their governments’ ability to carry out the necessary fiscal and monetary policies to support their economies during the Covid-19 pandemic. …