ScienceGuy

Generally, some of the developed countries (mainly the US) claim that it is the developing world responsible for the current state of emissions and they should be the one held responsible and not the developed countries. In fact, this was one of the reasons mentioned by President Trump for the US's withdrawal from the Paris Climate treaty. Additionally, there have been discussions about growth-emission connections and inequalities in emissions. Therefore, to get some insight into the reality of this argumentation, I analyzed 90 countries to understand how CO2 emissions have evolved over time and who's responsible and how much. I collected data on CO2 per capita emissions (pce) for all the countries from 1961-2010. Due to data availability issues, I selected 90 countries amongst them for whom annual data was available for the given period. Because my objective was to analyze the inequalities in emissions and their evolution over time, it was necessary for me to track th

Interestingly in my MSc. essay, I had observed that the direct impact of oil prices are negative on CPI but positive on WPI. This means that if oil prices dive, WPI would dive but the direct impact would have inflationary pressures on CPI. However, the net behaviour on CPI depends on the combined effect of WPI and oil. Further, I had observed that the protein prices (pulses) are the major channel through which oil prices impact CPI. Additionally, it was found that there exists a negative relationship between oil prices and protein prices which drives CPI upwards when oil crashes. After I submitted my MSc. work, interestingly similar situations unfolded. Oil prices crashed, India went into lockdown and much-expected inflation to cool down. However, having written by essay, I was expecting inflation to rise as well, however, at first even it was quite counter-intuitive to me. As mentioned in livemint's article and I quote: "Aditi Nair, principal economist at ICRA Ratings

I have been asked several times if my chemical engineering study was useful at all in economies. As I always used to answer, the concepts are omnipresent. Basic learning mechanisms are the same, complex models just add more sophistication to it. To show an example here, I utilized the concepts learnt in chemical kinetics, especially when I had learnt to the model reaction in series and parallel. When I observed the data of daily COVID cases and cumulative deaths, I realized a resemblance between it and what I had learnt in engineering models. So, I decided to explore. Upon exploration, I found that indeed such models like SIR (basic one's) are being used by academicians to stimulate the spread of the novel corona-virus. They then build upon it to make it more realistic but at its core, the concepts are similar to those used in chemical kinetics. The simplest SIR models simulate how the three states susceptible (S), infectious (I) and recovered (R) interact. This is simi

- Summarised from Asian Development Bank's authors A. Abiad, M. Arao, E. Lavina, R. Platitas, J. Pagaduan, C. Jabagat's chapter in  COVID in developing economies This study uses ADB's Multi-Regio input-output tables (MRIOT) to evaluate the impact of domestic and external shocks created by COVID. The study uses country-specific information on the outbreak severity, stringency measures and affected mobility to estimate domestic shocks. Impact of stringent measures and declined mobility on economic activity The stringency measures and the declination of mobility for South Asian economies (average stringency 88 and mobility declination of -52%) are relatively large as compared to other parts of Asia (esp East Asia with average stringency 57 and elimination of -8% due to high testing and contact tracing) and World (average stringency ~70 and mobility declination of ~-35%). The larger impact in South Asia is mainly due to India's aggressive lockdown Plotting

- Summarised from World Bank's authors Rabah Arezki, Rachel Yuting Fan and Ha Nguyen's chapter in  COVID in developing economies Study says that MENA countries have poor testing and contract tracing system. MENA countries rank poorly in Global Health Security Index which measures preparedness to deal with pandemics. In two important components of the index, "epidemiology workforce" and "emergency preparedness and response planning" the region ranks near the bottom. However, some countries in the region especially those with GCC stand better. MENA countries face dual shock - both supply and demand. The former is due to declining labour productivity, arising due reduction in labour supply, infrastructure, capital and intermediate inputs etc. The latter has regional and global components. Global and regional decline in demand and disruption of value chains effect economy-dominant oil and tourism sector. Especially the heavy dependence on oil,

- Summarised from World Bank's authors Calvin Z. Djiofack, Hasan Dudu and Albert G. Zeufack's chapter in COVID in developing economies The study used simulations with ENVISAGE, World Bank’s computable general equilibrium model to investigate the economic impact of COVID in sub-Saharan Africa. Three scenarios were studied: Global spread and severe cases in Africa - Assumptions under this scenario were:  The containment measures in the developed economies are lifted after three months Activity in China beings picking up amid global slowdown Global growth slows by up to 3.5 percentage points before picking up in 2021 COVID spread to every sub-Saharan country China like scenario that no new cases within three months, that is, outbreak ends by July 2020  Propagation profile close to Ebola outbreak in Guinea The economic impact of Ebola used to calibrate the exogenous shocks. Size of shocks rescaled for each country according to the Epidemic Preparedness Index (E

- Summarised from Ilan Noy,  Nguyen Doan, Benno Ferrarini and Donghyun Park's article in COVID-19 in developing countries The economic effect and the health effects of the COVID are not as correlated as we might think. For example countries like Seychelles and Fiji had less than 20 reported cases but being highly tourism-dependent would be badly hit. Other countries with more cases also differ in their capabilities to access resources required to pull their economy out of the recession. This study studies mainly the distribution of risk amongst developing countries because it is this category which is most vulnerable to economic risk overall. To study the economic impact of different methods have been used: Coupling epidemiological with macroeconomic models, which are similar to the one’s used to study climate change, that is, the integrated assessment models (IAM’s). In the climate IAM’s the climate and economy are connected through temperature and productivity. Similarl