Could insurance provide an alternative to fiscal support in crisis response?

Author: Leigh Wolfrom

The COVID-19 pandemic led to significant economic disruptions and revenue losses for business impacted by workplace closure measures aimed at restraining the spread of the virus. Governments provided extensive monetary and fiscal support to address liquidity risks and mitigate the potential for mass insolvencies as few businesses had applicable insurance coverage for these types of losses. This paper examines the fiscal and insurance sector responses to the economic disruptions resulting from COVID-19 workplace closures, the challenges to the availability of insurance coverage for this risk and some of the challenges and risks related to large-scale fiscal support for businesses. It also includes a discussion of the potential contribution of a loss-sharing arrangement between governments and insurance markets for pandemic-related business interruption losses as a means of enhancing the contribution of insurance markets to providing financial protection in the context of future pandemics.

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Funding the future: The impact of population ageing on revenues across levels of government

Authors: Sean Dougherty, Pietrangelo de Biase and Luca Lorenzoni

Government revenues may be affected by economic growth and changes in demographics over time. The effect of economic growth can be captured by long-run buoyancy – responsiveness of government revenues to GDP growth – while the demographic effect can be captured by changes in labour income, asset income and consumption patterns over the life cycle, as well as population growth. This paper attempts to quantify the effect of population ageing on OECD tax revenues across different levels of government, by estimating error correction models of revenue buoyancies over the 1990 to 2018 period, by type of revenue, country and level of government. Multiple scenarios are used for the projections to 2040, which are combined with scenarios for the evolution of revenue bases using newly harmonized EU and UN National Transfer Accounts data as well as OECD Population Projections.

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