The nature of work is changing due to technological progress, globalization, and the rapidly expanding supply of college-educated workers. At a global level, these changes have induced a shift away from lower paying and less productive jobs with routine-intensive tasks toward higher paying and more productive jobs with more non-routine work. As a result, some analysts see hope for ‘global convergences’ — when lower-income countries catch up to their higher-income...

States with fragile state health systems have been commended for effective responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. But if we take into account factors such as favourable climate and the age structure of the population, the COVID-19 impact is, in fact, greater on states with weak institutions, explain Rachel M. Gisselquist and Andrea Vaccaro. A pandemic is precisely the sort of crisis in which effective state institutions should matter. Yet surprisingly, COVID-19 infections and deaths have been...