The world is coping with a global disaster, as the new Coronavirus takes a toll on many lost lives and a severe impact on economic activity. To provide a long-run perspective, this column documents the international response to a variety of disasters since 1790. Based on a new comprehensive database on loans extended by governments and central banks, official (sovereign-to-sovereign) international lending is much larger than generally known. Official lending spikes in times of global turmoil, such as wars, financial crises or natural disasters. Indeed, in these periods, official capital flows have repeatedly surpassed total private capital flows in the past two centuries. Wars, in particular, were accompanied by large surges in the volume of official cross-border lending. 2020 Level: advanced Coping with disasters: Lessons from two centuries of international response Sebastian Horn, Carmen Reinhart, Christoph Trebesch VOX CEPR Policy Portal This is webinar series organized by the SOAS Open Economic Forum and the SOAS Economics Department with speakers from the same department as well as other academic figures. 2020 Level: beginner The Economics of Covid-19 | SOAS University of London SOAS Open Economics Forum, SOAS Economics Department, Various SOAS Open Economics Forum The outbreak of COVID-19 has substantially accelerated the digitalization of the economy. Yet, this unprecedented growth of digital technology brought novel challenges to the labour market. Rise in income inequalities and precarious working conditions or polarization of jobs. In this essay, we try to assess what tools to use to counter these trends. 2021 Level: beginner Post-pandemic future of work - How does digitization impact labour? Neha Chauhan, Miguel Corredera, Krystian Lukasik, Filipa Reis Exploring Economics What made the false assumption that saving the economy at all cost during a pandemic so popular? This paper discusses different pathways through the COVID-19 pandemic at national and international level, and their consequences on the health of citizens and their economies. 2021 Level: beginner How not to save the economy? The interplay of economics and health during the COVID-19 pandemic Vera Leuner, Navaneeth M S, Leandro Pereira Monteiro, Eduardo Lacerda Camargo Bisneto Exploring Economics Tetteh Hormeku-Ajei, member of the Post-Colonialisms Today Working Group, provides insight on the history of primary commodity export dependence in Africa, and relates it to the difficulties African governments are facing finding necessary resources to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. 2020 Level: beginner Tracing Primary Commodity Export Dependence Tetteh Hormeku- Ajei Post-Colonialisms Today: postcolonialisms.regionsrefocus.org In this roundtable conversation, Post-Colonialisms Today members, Omar Ghannam, Kareem Megahed and Tetteh Hormeku-Ajei, look to policies from early post-independence Africa to tackle issues exacerbated by the COVID- 19 pandemic. 2020 Level: beginner Lessons from Africa’s past to cope with COVID-19 Omar Ghannam, Kareem Megahed, Tetteh Hormeku-Ajei Post-Colonialisms Today: postcolonialisms.regionsrefocus.org