The Reversal Problem: Development Going Backwards

​​The COVID-19 pandemic triggered the most synchronous economic downturn in more than a century. Ninety-percent of countries posted a decline in real per capita GDP in 2020, more than any other year since 1900 -- including two world wars and the economic depression of the 1930s. The health crisis pushed an estimated 120 million people into extreme poverty. For Emerging Markets and Developing Economies (EMDEs) however, the setback in their development markers did not start with the pandemic. COVID-19 deepened and accelerated a troubling trend of economic backsliding that had appeared around half a decade earlier. Carmen Reinhart, Minos A. Zombanakis Professor of the International Financial System and Former Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank Group, will focus this hybrid seminar on the “reversal problem."

Background reading can be found here: https://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/reversal-problem-development-going-backwards​

Lunch will be served for those joining us in person in the Democracy Lab (R414AB). Others should register to join us remotely via Zoom.