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Canada’s muted productivity growth during recent years has sparked concerns about the country’s investment climate. In this study, we develop a new natural language processing (NPL) based indicator, mining the richness of Twitter (now X) accounts to measure trends in the public perceptions of Canada’s investment climate. We find that while the Canadian investment climate appears to be generally favorable, there are signs of slippage in some categories in recent periods, such as with respect to governance and infrastructure. This result is confirmed by both survey-based and NLP-based indicators. We also find that our NLP-based indicators would suggest that perceptions of Canada’s investment climate are similar to perceptions of U.S. investment climate, except with respect to governance, where views of U.S. governance are notably more negative. Comparing our novel indicator relative to traditional survey-based indicators, we find that the NLP-based indicators are statistically significant in helping to predict investment flows, similar to survey-based measures. Meanwhile, the new NLP-based indicator offers insights into the nuances of data, allowing us to identify specific grievances. Finally, we construct a similar indicator for the U.S. and compare trends across countries.

Economic Anthropology --- Economic Sociology --- General Economics: General --- Language --- Large Data Sets: Modeling and Analysis --- Social and Economic Stratification

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Sub-Saharan Africa is still contending with an unprecedented health and economic crisis. In the months since the October 2020 Regional Economic Outlook: Sub-Saharan Africa, the region has confronted a second coronavirus (COVID-19) wave that swiftly outpaced the scale and speed of the first. While this episode has eased for now, many countries are bracing for further waves, particularly as access to vaccines remains scant.

Economic history. --- Africa --- Covid-19 --- Crisis management --- Crisis recovery and resolution planning --- Digitalization --- Economic & financial crises & disasters --- Finance, Public --- General Economics: General --- Health systems & services --- International Economics --- Macroeconomics --- Public expenditures and health

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A year into the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the race between vaccine and virus entered a new phase in the Middle East and Central Asia, and the path to recovery in 2021 is expected to be long and divergent. The outlook will vary significantly across countries, depending on the pandemic’s path, vaccine rollouts, underlying fragilities, exposure to tourism and contact-intensive sectors, and policy space and actions. 2021 will be the year of policies that continue saving lives and livelihoods and promote recovery, while balancing the need for debt sustainability and financial resilience. At the same time, policymakers must not lose sight of the transformational challenges to build forward better and accelerate the creation of more inclusive, resilient, sustainable, and green economies. Regional and international cooperation will be key complements to strong domestic policies.

Economic history. --- Covid-19 --- Crisis Management --- Crisis management --- Crisis recovery and resolution planning --- Economic & financial crises & disasters --- Financial crises --- Financial crisis --- General Economics: General --- Government expenditures and health --- Health care spending --- Health economics --- Health --- International Economics --- Macroeconomics --- National Government Expenditures and Health --- Public expenditures and health

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Russia’s war in Ukraine has exacerbated food insecurity that had already been on the rise for half a decade. Low-income countries are affected the most. This note suggests that the food and fertilizer price shock would add $9 billion in 2022 and 2023 to the import bills of the 48 most affected countries. The budgetary cost of protecting vulnerable households in these countries amounts to $5–7 billion. Strong and timely action on a global scale is needed to support vulnerable households through international humanitarian assistance and domestic fiscal measures; to maintain open trade; to enhance food production and distribution; and to invest in climate-resilient agriculture. The IMF has been stepping up its engagement to help tackle the global food crisis, working closely with partners, by providing policy advice, capacity building and financing. IMF financing is a third line of defense in meeting external financing needs associated with the global food shock, which should ideally be covered by donor grants and concessional borrowing from MDBs. A new food shock window under the emergency financing instruments is expected to be approved soon to further strengthen its lending response to the food crisis.

Food supply. --- Currency crises --- Economic & financial crises & disasters --- Economic sectors --- Economics of specific sectors --- Economics --- Economics: General --- Energy: Government Policy --- Environmental Taxes and Subsidies --- Financial crises --- General Economics: General --- Hydrocarbon Resources --- Informal sector --- Macroeconomics --- Nonrenewable Resources and Conservation: Demand and Supply --- Nonrenewable Resources and Conservation: Government Policy --- Redistributive Effects --- Taxation and Subsidies: Externalities

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This paper undertakes an investigation into the efficiency of the crude oil futures market and the forecasting accuracy of futures prices. Efficiency of the market is analysed in terms of the expected excess returns to speculation in the futures market. Accuracy of futures prices is compared with that of forecasts using alternative techniques, including time series and econometric models, as well as judgemental forecasts. The paper also explores the predictive power of futures prices by comparing the forecasting accuracy of end-of-month prices with weekly and monthly averages, using a variety of different weighting schemes. Finally, the paper investigates whether the forecasts from using futures prices can be improved by incorporating information from other forecasting techniques.

Commodities --- Derivative securities --- Diffusion Processes --- Dynamic Quantile Regressions --- Dynamic Treatment Effect Models --- Econometric analysis --- Econometric Modeling: General --- Econometric models --- Econometrics & economic statistics --- Econometrics --- Energy: Demand and Supply --- Energy: General --- Finance --- Finance: General --- Financial institutions --- Financial Instruments --- Financial markets --- Futures markets --- Futures --- General Economics: General --- General Financial Markets: General (includes Measurement and Data) --- Institutional Investors --- Investment & securities --- Investments: Energy --- Investments: Futures --- Macroeconomics --- Model Evaluation and Selection --- Non-bank Financial Institutions --- Oil prices --- Oil --- Pension Funds --- Petroleum industry and trade --- Prices --- Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles: Forecasting and Simulation --- Time-Series Models --- United States