Medical devices are technologies that help diagnose or treat patients, or prevent illness without the use of drugs. They include everything from MRI scanners, hip implants and scalpel blades to smartphone apps that treat depression. The EU is currently struggling to implement a wide-ranging change in how medical devices are regulated – from the 1993 Medical Device Directive (MDD) to the 2017 Medical Device Regulation (MDR). Phased introduction of the MDR was due to be completed by May 2020, but was extended until this year due to COVID-19 pressures. This new regulatory framework is designed to ensure more thorough testing of devices before they can be used on patients, and more rigorous monitoring of performance of devices once on the market. The MDR’s implementation, however, has not gone smoothly.

To read the full report from the Centre for European Reform (CER), please click here. 

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Since the beginning of the pandemic, lockdowns and other containment measures as well as their effects on certain sectors of the US economy, have been the focus of much analysis. Millions of jobs were lost as businesses that focused on, for example, the retail trade and tourism, shuttered.

One less examined aspect of the pandemic has been the effect of declining external aggregate demand on American industries and sectors that depend on exports. Not only were these businesses hurt by containment measures and other effects of the virus in the United States itself, they have faced reduced demand for their goods and services from the rest of the world.

Many low- and middle-income countries have experienced more severe economic crises due to the pandemic than high-income countries, and thus have imported less from countries like the United States. This has led to the temporary loss of millions of export-related jobs in the United States.

This fall-off in demand also means that rate of the return of American export-related jobs — jobs both directly and indirectly involved in the production of exports — is dependent upon a broad economic recovery in the rest of the world.

Special Drawing Rights, which are cost-free for the United States, can help boost global demand for American exports by improving the financial position of low- and middle-income countries. Increased demand for American exports would bring back these export-related jobs back more quickly, as well as put the US economy on a path to creating more export-related jobs over the next five years. The US economy is still down about 6.5 million jobs from its pre-pandemic level of employment, and 9.2 million below the pre-pandemic trend.

To read the full report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), please click here. 

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Since the beginning of 2021, developed economies have made strides in vaccinating growing shares of their populations, raising prospects of a recovery in those economies and, in turn, the broader global economy. However, a surge in diagnosed cases in large developing economies and resistance to vaccinations among some populations in developed economies raise questions about the speed and the strength of an economic recovery over the near term. The economic fallout from the pandemic could risk continued labor dislocations as a result of lingering high levels of unemployment not experienced since the Great Depression of the 1930s and high levels of debt among developing economies. Job losses have been concentrated more intensively in the services sector where workers have been unable to work offsite.

The human costs in terms of lives lost will permanently affect global economic growth in addition to the cost of elevated levels of poverty, lives upended, careers derailed, and increased social unrest. Some estimates indicate that 95 million people may have entered into extreme poverty in 2020 with 80 million more undernourished compared to pre-pandemic levels. In addition, some estimates indicate that global trade could fall by an annual amount of 9.0% or slightly less in 2020 as a result of the global economic downturn, exacting an especially heavy economic toll on trade-dependent developing and emerging economies. While the full economic impact of the pandemic is coming more into focus in developed economies where vaccinations are facilitating a return to prepandemic levels of economic activity, the global impact remains less certain as new viral outbreaks have worsened the economic impact in some developing economies. This report provides an overview of the global economic costs to date and the response by governments and international institutions to address these effects.

To view the full report from the Congressional Research Service, click here.

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Although many trade agreements take human rights impacts into consideration, the monitoring systems that have emerged so far are not comprehensive. Without robust human rights monitoring, trading partners have little chance of ensuring that their counterparts are meeting their commitments.

While there are considerable structural, political and resource-related challenges to conducting more systematic and effective human rights monitoring, recent experiences in this field can help policymakers design more effective monitoring mechanisms for the future.

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The private sector is ramping up fast COVID-19 vaccine production, thereby narrowing the gap between vaccine supply and demand. The purpose of this note is to report the latest estimates of how much of the vaccine shortage will be eliminated this year, given what is known today about existing vaccine production capacity, announced capacity expansion this year, and sobering lessons learned from attempts to boost production during the first five months of this year. The projections reported here do not include any extra production that might result from the adoption of a TRIPS waiver at the World Trade Organization.

Inevitably, any forward-looking exercise like this involves making forecasts—details of which can be found in the box below. How good are previous forecasts using this approach? Figure 1 shows the total production levels forecasted in February 2021, the observed outcomes, and contrasts them to the vaccine manufacturers’ projections. The latter were way off. However, Airfinity’s forecasts closely track the substantial vaccine production increases observed in March and April 2021. The average percentage forecast error fell from 20.1% in March to just 9.8% in April.

Using the same method, and taking account of the fact that 18 vaccines are in phase III trials and given what is known about the likelihood of their approval and related production plans, it is possible to project out COVID-19 vaccine production through to the end of 2021 (see Figure 2). By the end of December 2021, the total number of doses produced is projected to be 11.14 billion, exceeding the 10.82 billion doses needed.

Production in the third quarter of 2021 is expected to be in excess of 3 billion doses, whereas in the fourth quarter production is expected to reach just under 5 billion doses. Should these forecasts come to pass, enough vaccine will have been produced this year to reach herd immunity worldwide. Booster shots would add to demand—but the first round of inoculation would not be held back on account of limited production. These findings imply the current vaccine shortage can be eliminated this year.

To read the full report, please click here. 

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The gender gap discussed in this Policy Brief measures the difference between the share of women employed or actively looking for paid work, relative to the share of men. To gauge its evolution over time, and especially during the pandemic, we have compiled a new database across 43 countries (36 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD] and 7 emerging-market economies) representing 60 percent of global GDP (in current US dollars as of 2019).3 These data track trends over 30 years, providing many valuable insights into the evolving and varied nature of male and female workplace presence. The data will also be updated quarterly and made publicly available. Forthcoming research will examine trends over the three decades of the database, with a focus on demographic factors, differences among sectors of the economy, and what can be learned from the experience of varied government policies. Some preliminary analysis of the trends in 2020, a time of enormous disruption because of the pandemic, suggests that: 

• Out of the 43 countries in this study, two Latin American countries—Chile (+2.3 percentage points) and Colombia (+1.3)—and Finland (+1.1) experienced the largest gender gap expansion in monthly labor force participation from early 2020; Colombia and Cyprus experienced the largest expansion in quarterly labor force participation gap by more than 2 percentage points.

• The gender gap widened in the United States, driving 2.5 million women from their jobs in what Vice President Kamala Harris called a “national emergency” for women.

• The quarterly gender gap narrowed the most in three small European economies (Luxembourg, Lithuania, and Malta) by 2.9, 2.1, and 1.5 percentage points, respectively. Nine other countries (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Romania, Russia, the Slovak Republic, Turkey, and the United Kingdom) have also experienced a shrinking of the gender gap in 2020 (see appendix table).

• Female labor force participation fell the most in countries where women are more likely to be employed in the services and retail sales sectors, which were disproportionately affected by the lockdown measures adopted to curb the spread of the virus.

• Employees on temporary contracts were more likely to have lost their jobs during the pandemic. In countries with a lower share of female workers on such contracts relative to men, women were less likely to drop out of the labor force relative to men. Generally speaking, women in temporary employment are at the lower end of the income scale and do not include professional women with credentials who seek career opportunities in their jobs, a sector that has opened up for women in many advanced economies in recent years.

• Not surprisingly, countries with stronger laws against gender discrimination, as measured by the overall World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law index score, experienced fewer disparities between men and women in keeping jobs during the pandemic.

• Greater government expenditure on childcare in the pre-COVID-19 era does not appear to have insulated female workers from the labor-market impacts of the pandemic.

To read the full policy brief by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, please click here. 

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Recent events influenced our choice of policy scenarios. First, some vaccines have reported high levels of efficacy among children, raising the question as to whether inoculation will be extended to those Americans aged 5 years or older. Second, fears have been expressed about future variants and the need to build up a U.S. reserve of vaccines. Third, in mid-March the Biden Administration decided to “loan” four million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine to Canada and Mexico. The White House press secretary is on record stating “Our first priority remains to vaccinate the US population, but the reality is the pandemic knows no borders and ensuring our neighbours can contain the virus is a mission critical to ending the pandemic.”

We defined four scenarios, each reflecting different possible U.S. objectives: (1) vaccinate the U.S. adult population, (2) vaccinate the U.S. population aged 5 or over, (3) create vaccine reserves (we present three options each with a different scale), and (4) vaccinate the population of Canada and Mexico as well. Each objective requires a certain amount of vaccine doses to be produced (see the fourth column of the table overleaf). We report the date when the required production level is met (see column five) and the dates when any surplus generated thereafter reaches 100 million, 500 million, and a billion doses (see columns 6-8).

Production necessary to vaccinate the U.S. adult population should be completed by 20 June 2021. Following that a surplus of 500 million doses would have accumulated by 25 September 2021. These two dates move back to 18 July 2021 and 18 October 2021, respectively, if American children are inoculated as well. Should the White House decide to inoculate the populations of Canada and Mexico as well, then no surplus will be available until 16 September 2021. Clearly, the larger the U.S. vaccine reserve created the later surpluses become available. The date when the United States can contribute to vaccine dissemination outside of North America is materially affected by the scenario chosen.

To read the full report, please click here. 

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This report on the future of work after COVID-19 is the first of three MGI reports that examine aspects of the postpandemic economy. The others look at the pandemic’s long-term influence on consumption and the potential for a broad recovery led by enhanced productivity and innovation. Here, we assess the lasting impact of the pandemic on labor demand, the mix of occupations, and the workforce skills required in eight countries with diverse economic and labor market models: China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Together, these eight countries account for almost half the global population and 62 percent of GDP.

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