In response to the Covid-19 crisis, 186 countries implemented direct cash transfers to households, and 181 introduced in-kind programs that lowered the cost of utilities such as electricity, water, transport, and mobile money.
Our study finds that smart lockdowns in Lahore did not have a significant effect on 10th-grade examination results; students possibly turned to alternative learning options outside school.
Research suggests that partisanship and social media usage correlate with belief in COVID-19 misinformation, and that misinformation shapes citizens’ willingness to get vaccinated.
This paper investigates how uncertainty driven by political instability or the Covid-19 crisis affects mobile money adoption and use by informal businesses in Burkina Faso.
We document the trajectory of SMEs in Burkina Faso between 2020 and 2022, which were affected not only by the global Covid-19 shock, but also by several negative local shocks: two coups took place in 2022, in the context of increasing frequent terrorist attacks.
We document differences in the experiences of firms and firm owners by gender during the early COVID-19 crisis in Ghana. Female-owned firms are more likely to close during the Spring of 2020, but equally likely to be open by July 2020.
This paper reports on the universe of garment-making firm owners in a Ghanaian district capital during the COVID-19 crisis. By July 2020, 80% of both male- and female-owned firms were operational.
