Podcast

Alleviating global poverty

In this Fiduciary Investors Series podcast Amanda White talks to Esther Duflo, the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at MIT and current Nobel Prize winner in Economics about the impact of the coronavirus pandemi
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Europe’s response to COVID-19

European real GDP is now projected to contract by 7 per cent in 2020, its biggest decline since World War II, followed by a rebound of 4.7 per cent in 2021. But the recovery’s strength will depend crucially on the course of the pandemic, people’s behavior, and the degree of continued economic policy support. 
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COVID-19 hits retirement system adequacy

COVID-19 has exacerbated retirement insecurity and governments need to use this as an opportunity to examine their system inadequacies and make improvements according to David Knox, partner at Mercer and author of the annual Mercer CFA Institute Global Pension index which measures adequacy, sustainability and integrity of 39 retirement systems.
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Economic future very precarious: IMF

The global macro-economic future remains precarious amongst huge uncertainties according to the head of the capital markets department at the IMF, Tobias Adrian, who warns of fragilities including the disconnection between the real economy and financial markets, and growing debt, as potential interruption to future growth.
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Asset owners adapt and respond to COVID

The Responsible Asset Allocator Initiative finds that 25 leading public pension and sovereign wealth funds, with assets of $6 trillion, are investing tens of billions of dollars in COVID-19 solutions and in funds to support stricken companies. Here they look at what the leading asset allocators around the world are doing to respond to the pandemic.
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Investors outline actions for resilience

Global economic activities will not be back to pre-COVID levels until 2022 according to CPP Investments’ outlook, with the giant Canadian investor expecting the situation to get worse before it gets better.
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Five lessons from the COVID-19 crisis

The coronavirus pandemic sparked a surge of volatility across global financial markets. In this paper, MSCI looks at five key lessons for investors from the crisis, including that managing factors was more critical than picking stocks.
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COVID-19 impact far from over

New research looking at the impact of COVID-19 under different scenarios – from opening of economies to no vaccine – suggests the economic consequences of COVID-19 under all scenarios is substantial and the ongoing economic adjustment is far from over.
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Alternative data as a market predictor

It is critical to analyse how much COVID-19 could impact the US economy and stock markets but most of the traditional factors or economic indicators will lag the market movement. Therefore, alternative datasets other than the financial data show their explanation power to provide insights into the pandemic. This article, by academics at Tsinghua University, University of Illinois and Carnegie Mellon University, looks at the pattern of the market fluctuation from the perspective of alternative data.
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Pandemic, recession, economic crisis

COVID-19 has delivered an enormous global shock, leading to steep recessions in many countries. The baseline forecast by the World Bank envisions a 5.2 per cent contraction in global GDP in 2020—the deepest global recession in decades.
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Building better retirement systems

The global COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for better risk management tools to handle longevity and ageing. This paper by Wharton's Olivia Mitchell, offers an assessment of the status quo prior the coronavirus; evaluates how retirement systems are faring in the wake of the shock; examines insurance and financial market products that may render retirement systems more resilient for the world’s ageing population; and looks at the potential role for policymakers.
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Building back better

For the economic recovery from the COVID-19 crisis to be durable and resilient, a return to ‘business as usual’ and environmentally destructive investment patterns and activities must be avoided. To avoid this, economic recovery packages should be designed to “build back better”.
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Sustainable and inclusive: recovery

As policymakers consider policy interventions to support the recovery, investors should be engaging policymakers by providing technical expertise and allocating capital to sustainable investments. A new report by PRI presents a series of recommendations for investor policy engagement and indicative proposals for action.
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Navigating a pandemic-driven crisis

A new report by Mercer, COVID-19 – Investment Governance and Strategy to Navigate a Pandemic-Driven Market Crisis, examines how large asset owners are finding ways to pursue attractive risk-adjusted investment returns while also taking investment actions to help mitigate and address the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic through investment governance.
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Infrastructure investment opportunities

During the current COVID 19 environment, investment in infrastructure should be leveraged as an opportunity to keep people employed, keep businesses afloat and to maintain the productive capacity of the economy.
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Regulatory implications for banking

This note provides the IMF and the World Bank staff’s high-level recommendations and guidance on the appropriate regulatory and supervisory responses for the banking sector and offers an overview of measures taken across jurisdictions to date.
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COVID-19 pushes millions into poverty

COVID-19 is taking its toll on the world, causing deaths, illnesses and economic despair. But how is the deadly virus impacting global poverty? The World Bank argues that it is pushing about 40-60 million people into extreme poverty, with its best estimate being 49 million.
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Real estate leaders must act now

To respond to the current and urgent threat of COVID-19, and to lay the groundwork to deal with what may be permanent changes for the industry after the crisis, real estate leaders must take action now.
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Global policy tracker

The HBS Global Policy Tracker is an initiative to collect and standardise economic policies implemented around the world as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It focuses on fiscal policy, monetary policy, and lockdowns. The data is updated in real-time with the efforts of several dozen students and staff at Harvard Business School and other Harvard Schools.
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The macroeconomics of epidemics

This research studies the interaction between economic decisions and epidemics. The model implies that people’s decision to cut back on consumption and work reduces the severity of the epidemic, as measured by total deaths. These decisions exacerbate the size of the recession caused by the epidemic.
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Lessons from COVID-19 for private debt

The global economic shutdown triggered by COVID-19 has put the North American private debt industry to its first major test. What lessons can be learned from the global financial crisis that are relevant today? What lessons are emerging as a result of COVID-19? And how might the industry evolve?
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The great lockdown

The global economy is projected to contract sharply by –3 per cent in 2020, much worse than during the 2008–09 financial crisis. In a baseline scenario--which assumes that the pandemic fades in the second half of 2020 and containment efforts can be gradually unwound—the global economy is projected to grow by 5.8 percent in 2021 as economic activity normalises, helped by policy support. The risks for even more severe outcomes, however, are substantial.
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How RI should be responding to COVID-19

The PRI is working with signatories to further develop thinking on what the COVID-19 crisis means for investors. It is establishing two signatory participation groups to coordinate and develop investor responses, focusing on short term responses, and a future economic recovery phase.
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Economic impact of containment measures

This OECD note provides illustrative estimates of the initial direct impact of shutdowns, based on an analysis of sectoral output and consumption patterns across countries and an assumption of common effects within each sector and spending category in all countries.
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Greening the recovery

The COVID-19 crisis won’t have a lasting impact on climate change, but the response will—fiscal policymakers should thus aim to make the recovery green according to the IMF.
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Corporate resilience during COVID-19

The authors study whether during the 2020 COVID-19 induced market crash, investors differentiate across companies based on a firm’s human capital, supply chain and operating crisis response.
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COVID-19 treatment and vaccine tracker

The Milken Institute is tracking the development of treatments and vaccines for COVID-19. There are currently more than 2.5 million confirmed cases globally, 114 treatments in consideration and 79 vaccines in development.
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Pandemic I: The first modern pandemic

In this memo Bill Gates shares his views of how to accelerate global innovation, which is the key to limiting the damage to society and the economy. This includes innovations in testing, treatments, vaccines, and policies to limit the spread while minimizing the damage to economies and well-being.
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The economics of a pandemic

This lecture by professors of economics at the London Business School looks at the science, health policies, economics and macroeconomic policies related to COVID-19.
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How the G20 can hasten recovery

This report argues the G20 not only should but can be meaningfully useful to recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. It looks at the role of G20 in designing a fiscal response, strengthening access to vital medical supplies and ensuring global food security.
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COVID-induced economic uncertainty

This paper identifies three indicators – stock market volatility, newspaper-based economic uncertainty, and subjective uncertainty in business expectation surveys – that provide real-time forward-looking uncertainty measures and illustrate how they can be used to assess the macroeconomic impact of the COVID-19 crisis. It implies a year-on-year contraction in US real GDP of nearly 11 per cent as of 2020 Q4
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COVID-19: Implications for business

In this note McKinsey & Company offers its latest insights on the COVID-19 pandemic, starting with a survey of the current epidemiology and the five dynamics leaders need to watch.