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• Using the IMF country reports for 1978-2019 and text analytics, we identify four narratives about growth economics. • With a vocabulary of more than 100 concepts, we find much lower occurrence of concepts from growth theory. • Major events such as economic crises and political leadership changes tend to affect the direction of growth narratives. • We propose a nexus of the pool of economic ideas, power structure, and trigger events to interpret the shift in narratives. The debate among economists about an optimal growth recipe has been the subject of competing "narratives." We identify-four major growth narratives using the text analytics of IMF country reports over 1978–2019. The narrative "Economic Structure"—services, manufacturing, and agriculture—has been on a secular decline overshadowed by the "Structural Reforms"—competitiveness, transparency, and governance. We observe the rise and fall of the "Washington Consensus"—privatization and liberalization—and the rise to dominance of the "Washington Constellation," a collection of many disparate terms such as productivity, tourism, and inequality. We interpret these changes through the lens of a nexus of the changing pool of economic ideas, the power structure within organizations, and the shocks that trigger a shift of narratives and their translation into policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Continuous universal testing and isolation strategy is the most viable way to vanquish the pandemic while keeping the economy open with minimal restrictions. • The estimated cost of testing is dwarfed by its return, mitigating the economic fallout of the pandemic. • To implement universal testing, an epidemiological rather than clinical approach to testing—sacrificing accuracy for scalability, convenience, and speed—is required to reach a large share of population in short time. In the face of pandemics, a viable global strategy, beyond relying on the fast discovery of a vaccine or a cure, is needed. We study quantitatively the feasibility and effectiveness of mass testing to contain an epidemic. We also explore the implications of various smart testing strategies to decrease the needed testing rates. We use a modified SIR model with testing and extend the model to incorporate mobility patterns in a densely populated area. For a pandemic like COVID-19, model simulations show that the rate of testing needed to squash the curve within a month varies between 20–30 percent of the population randomly tested daily to less than 5 percent, combining periodic and group testing. We also show that mobility restrictions can enhance the efficacy of testing. Scale could be as important as accuracy in testing, implying that an epidemiological rather than clinical approach for the approval of tests is needed. The estimated cost of testing is dwarfed by its return, mitigating the economic fallout of the pandemic. Without a vaccine or a cure, mass testing is the only viable and less costly strategy to indefinitely "squash the curve" while allowing for major economic activities to resume. Planning and executing a testing strategy is necessary and urgent as an insurance policy against future pandemics. It should be considered as an investment to build a testing and isolation infrastructure, which should be maintained as part of the pandemic preparedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Policymakers in oil-exporting countries confront the question of how to allocate oil revenues among consumption, saving, and investment in the face of high income volatility. We study this allocation problem in a precautionary saving and investment model under uncertainty. Consistent with data in the 2000s, precautionary saving is sizable and the marginal propensity to consume out of permanent shocks is below one, in stark contrast to the predictions of the perfect foresight model. The optimal investment rate is high if productivity in the tradable sector is high enough. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]