Coverage Responses to Excessive Vitality and Meals Costs

The surge in power and meals costs, which was amplified by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has prompted a flurry of coverage responses by international locations throughout 2022. The goal of those coverage responses was to mitigate social and financial affect of upper costs. On this paper we doc bulletins of coverage measures primarily based on the Database of Vitality and Meals Worth Actions (DEFPA), which was developed primarily based on two rounds of survey responses of IMF nation groups carried out in March/April and June/July of 2022. The paper additionally offers dialogue on coverage trade-offs when contemplating applicable coverage responses each for international locations with sturdy and weak social security nets. Key coverage message is that offering focused help to households within the type of money transfers is probably the most cost-effective manner of assuaging the burden on susceptible households and need to be most popular over broad-based mechanisms that stop worldwide costs to cross by way of to home customers.