02467cas a2200337 a 4500 AALejournalIMF021687 230101c9999 xx r poo 0 0eng d 5.00 USD 9781513582405 1018-5941 BD-DhAAL BD-DhAAL Furceri, Davide. The Rise in Inequality after Pandemics : Can Fiscal Support Play a Mitigating Role? / Davide Furceri, Prakash Loungani, Jonathan Ostry, Pietro Pizzuto. Washington, D.C. : International Monetary Fund, 2021. 1 online resource (26 pages) IMF Working Papers <strong>Off-Campus Access:</strong> No User ID or Password Required <strong>On-Campus Access:</strong> No User ID or Password Required Electronic access restricted to authorized BRAC University faculty, staff and students Major epidemics of the last two decades (SARS, H1N1, MERS, Ebola and Zika) have been followed by increases in inequality (Furceri, Loungani, Ostry and Pizzuto, 2020). In this paper, we show that the extent of fiscal consolidation in the years following the onset of these pandemics has played an important role in determining the extent of the increase in inequality. Episodes marked by extreme austerity-measured using either the government's fiscal balance, health expenditures or redistribution-have been associated with an increase in the Gini measure of inequality three times as large as in episodes where fiscal policy has been more supportive. We survey the evidence thus far on the distributional impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, which suggests that inequality is likely to increase in the absence of strong policy actions. We review the case made by many observers (IMF 2020; Stiglitz 2020; Sandbu 2020b) that fiscal support should not be withdrawn prematurely despite understandable concerns about high public debt-to-GDP ratios. Mode of access: Internet Aggregate Factor Income Distribution imf Foreign Exchange imf Health Behavior imf Informal Economy imf Underground Econom imf Loungani, Prakash. Ostry, Jonathan. Pizzuto, Pietro. IMF Working Papers; Working Paper ; No. 2021/120 Full text available on IMF http://elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/001/2021/120/001.2021.issue-120-en.xml IMF e-Library