Join us this International Development Week to learn about scenario planning as a tool to navigate uncertainty in international development, and how scenario planning can be used in planning for COVID-19 recovery. Scenario planning creates narratives of ways that the future might unfold, with the goal of informing decisions that are made today.
Panelists will discuss their work on scenario planning around Malawi’s recovery from COVID-19, including its integration with quantitative economic modeling. More information is available here, or view the complete report, Malawi in 2025: Emerging from Crisis?
According to Limestone’s latest modeling, a more-intense early-year lockdown may be less costly for the Canadian economy in the long run.
Limestone’s STUDIO model, which provides rapid-response policy analysis to guide short-to-medium term policy response, is the basis of the economic projections behind the Canadian Shield proposal put forward by the COVID Strategic Choices Group.
According to the model, a mitigation strategy of on-again, off-again lockdown measures into 2021 will result in an average monthly deficit of 524,416full time equivalentjobsand a $82,627 million GDP deficit for Ontario– numbers that will be more extreme if there is a delay in widespread access to a vaccine. Meanwhile, pursuing a strategy that pursues the goal of eliminating the virus using moderately restrictive lockdown measures for a longer period of time would result in an average deficit of 371,030 full time equivalent jobs and a $60,951 million GDP deficit for Ontario. This ‘Canadian Shield’ model was found to be the least costly policy response of the options considered.
Pursuing such a policy means shifting priority to maintain a downward trend in COVID cases in order to avoid additional waves of lockdowns later in the spring.
“Full economic activity does not immediately resume with the lifting of economic restrictions,” says Dr. Christopher Cotton, Director of Research at Limestone Analytics and Professor of Economics at Queen’s University. “This means that an intense lockdown that allows for full reopening afterward may result in fewer overall jobs lost and a lower decline in GDP than on-again, off-again lockdowns where new restrictions are required every few months before the economy has a chance to fully recover from the previous round of restrictions.”
Limestone’s model can be adapted to provide estimates of job and GDP loss under any set of epidemiological and policy scenarios at the federal, provincial or municipal level. For the Canadian Shield proposal, the model was used to provide economic estimates for the epidemiological and policy projections being considered by the COVID Strategic Choices Group.
Limestone releases a monthly policy brief on COVID-19 lockdown and its impact on economy:
The policy brief will be updated monthly with projections for more-specific scenarios regarding the spread of the disease and policy evolution over the coming months.
Spotlight in News:
CBC News: New ‘near zero’ COVID approach needed in Canada, argues group of academics
Toronto Star – Saving more lives and the economy? Experts have a plan. Will all of Canada use it?
Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) awarded Limestone Analytics a five-year contract under the Gender and Social Inclusion (GSI) Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA). MCC is an innovative and independent U.S foreign assistance agency that helps lead the fight against global poverty by promoting economic growth. This agreement will support MCC’s GSI practice group through a range of call orders to provide gender and social inclusion support.
The consortium is united in its commitment to the production of rigorous, researched-based, and innovative solutions. Members in the consortium are experts in all MCC sectors of interest, including energy, agriculture, education, land reform, water and sanitation, transportation, financial inclusion, and health. Each member has uniquely contributed to the advancement of GSI across institutions.
Limestone has conducted various successful projects in mainstreaming gender and social inclusion into economic analysis. Examples include an Impact Evaluation of Girls’ Education Challenge in Zimbabwe and more than eight Evaluation-Based Cost-Benefit Analyses for MCC. Dr. Bahman Kashi from Limestone led USAID’s first guidelines on integrating gender into CBA in 2016. Limestone’s Director of Strategic Operations. Lindsay Wallace has over 20 years of experience growing and leading multi-country teams in the design, delivery, and evaluation of projects that focus on gender and social inclusion. She led economic analysis and program design to drive economic growth and poverty reduction with UK DFID in-country offices, including Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and London.
Limestone Analytics is leading this project on behalf of MCC. Joining Limestone on the project are subcontractors Social Development Direct and Causal Design, who further our capacity to provide high-quality, innovative, and expert development assistance and research services.
CAFIID is a community of individuals, organizations, and investors. It is a platform for members in development and economics to collectively strengthen the value and the volume of impact investment in developing countries.
Other Board of directors at CAFIID include members from Sarona, FinDev, DID, Convergence, MEDA, Greater Montreal Climate Fund, and Oikocredit. Further memberships are structured into four committees, including Learning, Collaboration, Operating Principles for Impact management, and Sustainability committees.
Notable organizations who collaborate within the committees come from organizations including MaRS, Rally Assets, iDE Canada, Deloitte, Deetken, Power of Voice, Convergence, AKFC, Mastercard Foundation, Cordiant Capital, Social Capital Partners, Frontier Markets Advisors, WUSC, and some expert independent consultants.
Wallace is a leading economist and impact measurement, specialist. Before joining Limestone, she worked as a Head of Impact for the Mastercard Foundation, where she oversaw impact measurement and evaluation for the Foundation’s $2B of investments. Other notable roles Wallace has held in the past include Deputy Director of the Financial Inclusion program at the Mastercard Foundation, where she oversaw $500m of blended finance investments. She also led economic growth programming for the UK Department for International Development in Rwanda. She was responsible for programming in trade, climate change, agriculture, land tenure reform, and financial inclusion. She also has public finance experience working with Ministries of Finance in Ontario, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Guyana in budget reform, expenditure forecasting, and fiscal transparency.
Recently Wallace developed CAFIID’s first report, ‘Through the Pandemic and Beyond‘ on Canadian Impact Investing in Emerging Frontier markets. It includes reviewing the Canadian impact investing landscape for international development, the volume of assets under management, the players, their strategies, and the products. The report offers prescriptions for much-needed change to advance Canada’s corporate and financial market contributions to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.
Along with extensive professional experience, Wallace holds an M.A Public Policy and Administration from Carleton University, an M.A Economics from the University of Toronto, and a B.A. Political Science and Economics from McGill University, Canada.
As a Board Member at CAFIID, she will contribute her expertise to forward the community’s vision to advance Canada’s contributions, and capital flows towards impact investment in developing countries, creating more sustainable and equitable communities.
The Royal Society of Canada has established a new economics working group to study COVID-19. The group is charged with exploring policies that may help the economy and society recover from the crisis, avoid future disasters, and prosper in the post-pandemic world.
The group brings together a small group of Canada’s leading economists from institutions across the country. The members specialize in a diverse array of research areas, from health to education to universal basic income to macroeconomic policy. The intention of the Royal Society is to bring together prominent experts with a diverse set of viewpoints and expertise in order to facilitate collaboration and develop actionable recommendations policymakers.
The Royal Society has appointed Christopher Cotton, Limestone Analytics’ Principal Economist, to the working group. Dr. Cotton is also a Professor of Economics at Queen’s University, where he holds the Jarislowsky-Deutsch Chair in Economic and Financial Policy and serves as the Director of the John Deutsch Institute for the Study of Economic Policy. He is an expert on evidence-based policymaking, education policy, and economic development. For the past several months, he has been jointly leading a team of researchers from Queen’s and Limestone Analytics to model the impact of the economic shutdown and compare the economic impact of reopening and recovery policies.
Also joining the group from Queen’s is Robin Boadway, an Emeritus Professor of Economics and one of the world’s leading experts in public finance, including tax policy and universal basic income. Dr. Boadway is a member of the Order of Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
The Royal Society working group will gain insights from the Limestone Analytics Studio model, developed to study the economic impact of major disasters and pandemics. The model is designed to help local and provincial policy makers understand the outcomes associated with different policy choices. It is also the economic model behind a major federally-funded, multi-partner initiative to develop an AI-driven analytics platform for policy makers to explore both the economic and health projections associated with alternative reopening and recovery strategies.
Over the next several months, the Royal Society of Canada’s COVID-19 working group will collaborate to develop a series of policy recommendations for creating a Canadian economy and society that is more resistant, resilient and responsive to future shocks. These recommendations will be released in a public report in the fall.
Limestone Analytics has a new look! We are incredibly excited to announce our company’s new branding. Why the change? We have grown rapidly over the past two years, expanding our geographical footprint and range of services. Along the way we grew in size, made strong partnerships, and surpassed new frontiers for service quality.
Communication is an important element in what we do and maintaining the pace of our growth called for new communication tools. Rest assured that our new brand is a positive transformation and will not affect the high quality services associated with Limestone.
We hope you enjoy our new website, and enjoy reading about some of the projects we are working on.
