Person:
Acosta, Pablo Ariel
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Labor economics,
Migration,
Skills and workforce development,
International trade,
Social protection and labor,
Social protection and growth
Degrees
ORCID
External Links
Departments
Global Practice on Social Protection and Jobs
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
January 31, 2023
Biography
Pablo A. Acosta, an Argentinean national, graduated from his Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2006 and joined the World Bank in 2008 where he works as a Senior Economist in the Social Protection and Jobs Global Practice. Prior to his position at the World Bank, he worked at the CAF Latin American Development Bank, at the Ministry of Economy in Argentina, and the Foundation for Latin American Economic Research (FIEL). His main areas of work and research are social protection, labor economics, migration, skills, and wage inequality.
Publication Search Results
1 - 10 of 31
-
Publication
The Impact of Remittances on Poverty and Human Capital : Evidence from Latin American Household Surveys
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-06)This paper explores the impact of remittances on poverty, education, and health in 11 Latin American countries using nationally representative household surveys and making an explicit attempt to account for one of the inherent costs associated with migration-the potential income that the migrant may have made at home. The main findings of the study are the following: (1) regardless of the counterfactual used remittances appear to lower poverty levels in most recipient countries; (2) yet despite this general tendency, the estimated impacts tend to be modest; and (3) there is significant country heterogeneity in the poverty reduction impact of remittances' flows. Among the aspects that have been identified in the paper that may lead to varying outcomes across countries are the percentage of households reporting remittances income, the share of remittances of recipient households belonging to the lowest quintiles of the income distribution, and the relative importance of remittances flows with respect to GDP. While remittances tend to have positive effects on education and health, this impact is often restricted to specific groups of the population. -
Publication
What is the Impact of International Remittances on Poverty and Inequality in Latin America?
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-06)Workers' remittances have become a major source of income for developing countries. However, little is still known about their impact on poverty and inequality. Using a large cross-country panel dataset, the authors find that remittances in Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries have increased growth and reduced inequality and poverty. These results are robust to the use of different instruments that attempt to correct for the potential endogeneity of remittances. Household survey-based estimates for 10 LAC countries confirm that remittances have negative albeit relatively small inequality and poverty-reducing effects, even after imputations for the potential home earnings of migrants. -
Publication
Informal Jobs and Trade Liberalisation in Argentina
(Taylor and Francis, 2014-06-20)Rapid trade liberalization can exert profound effects on labor markets. Domestic firms, to sustain competitiveness for survival, could react through cutting labor benefits to achieve cost reductions. Alternatively, trade liberalization may alter the industry composition of firms changing the aggregate formality rates. This paper studies the relationship between trade liberalization and informality in Argentina. Using manufacturing industry-level data for 1992-2003, the results confirm the hypothesis that trade increases informality in industries that experience sudden foreign competition. This explains about a third of the increase in informality. Sectors with higher investment ratios are able to neutralize and reverse this effect. -
Publication
Adults’ Cognitive and Socioemotional Skills and their Labor Market Outcomes in Colombia
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-09)Previous research has shown that people with higher cognitive skills (mental abilities) and socioemotional skills (behaviors and personality) get better labor market outcomes. It is unclear, however, if this conclusion applies to low- and middle-income countries, given that existing literature builds on studies that are dominantly about highincome countries. In this paper, we explore how cognitive and socioemotional skills of adults, ages 15–64, relate to their labor market outcomes in the context of Colombia. Controlling for a range of confounding factors in a crosssectional survey, we do find that adults with higher skills also have better outcomes, while cognitive and socioemotional skills correlate with different ones and seemingly through different channels. Adults with higher cognitive skills have better jobs (with higher earnings, more formal, and highskilled) and are more likely to complete tertiary education. Socioemotional skills correlate more modestly with having a better job but more strongly with labor market participation and tertiary-education completion. Results suggest that adults with both cognitive and socioemotional skills tend to do better in the labor market and that policies boosting the development of both types may be beneficial in Colombia. -
Publication
Educational Upgrading and Returns to Skills in Latin America : Evidence from a Supply-Demand Framework, 1990–2010
( 2011-12-01)It has been argued that a factor behind the decline in income inequality in Latin America in the 2000s was the educational upgrading of its labor force. Between 1990 and 2010, the proportion of the labor force in the region with at least secondary education increased from 40 to 60 percent. Concurrently, returns to secondary education completion fell throughout the past two decades, while the 2000s saw a reversal in the increase in the returns to tertiary education experienced in the 1990s. This paper studies the evolution of wage differentials and the trends in the supply of workers by educational level for 16 Latin American countries between 1990 and 2000. The analysis estimates the relative contribution of supply and demand factors behind recent trends in skill premia for tertiary and secondary educated workers. Supply-side factors seem to have limited explanatory power relative to demand-side factors, and are only relevant to explain part of the fall in wage premia for high-school graduates. Although there is significant heterogeneity in individual country experiences, on average the trend reversal in labor demand in the 2000s can be partially attributed to the recent boom in commodity prices that could favor the unskilled (non-tertiary educated) workforce, although employment patterns by sector suggest that other within-sector forces are also at play, such as technological diffusion or skill mismatches that may reduce the labor productivity of highly-educated workers. -
Publication
Should Cash Transfers Be Confined to the Poor? Implications for Poverty and Inequality in Latin America
( 2011-11-01)This paper compares for 13 Latin American countries the poverty and inequality impacts of cash transfer programs that are given to all children and the elderly (that is, "categorical" transfers), to programs of equal budget that are confined to the poor within each population group (that is, "poverty targeted" transfers). The analysis finds that both the incidence of poverty and the depth of the poverty gap are important factors affecting the relative effectiveness of categorical versus poverty targeted transfers. The comparison of transfers to children and the elderly also supports the view that choosing carefully categories of beneficiaries is almost as important as targeting the poor for achieving a high poverty and inequality impact. Overall, the findings suggest that although in the Latin American context poverty targeting tends to deliver higher poverty impacts, there are circumstances under which categorical targeting confined to geographical regions (sometimes called "geographic targeting") may be a valid option to consider. This is particularly the case in low-income countries with widespread pockets of poverty. -
Publication
Pantawid Pamilya 2017 Assessment: An Update of the Philippine Conditional Cash Transfer’s Implementation Performance
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-09)This is the fourth benefit incidence analysis of the Philippines’ conditional cash transfer program that uses standard measures to assess the implementation performance of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program. The analysis shows that despite the program’s rapid expansion since it was piloted in 2007, it maintains good targeting accuracy, progressivity, and cost efficiency in delivering assistance to the poor. However, the recent halt in program expansion and use of outdated targeting system have resulted in lower coverage levels and incidence rates among the poor. Also, the inability to adjust benefit levels with inflation has resulted in lower generosity of benefits. Still, using the latest nationwide household survey data for 2017, the analysis shows that Pantawid Pamilya helps reduce poverty incidence and income inequality by 1.3 percentage point and 0.6 percentage point, respectively. Adjustments in the benefit level and program coverage are recommended to maintain the program’s relevance, adequacy of assistance, sustained impact on beneficiary welfare. -
Publication
Implementing Emergency Cash Transfers: The Philippine Experience in Response to the 2016/17 Disasters
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-05)Around the globe, there is an unending cycle of producing innovative policies that are relevantand responsive to today's complex problems of disaster risk reduction and mitigation. A lot ofevidence is pointing to the shifting paradigm in responding to emergencies. Foremost amongthem is the growing acceptance of cash transfers as a response tool to disasters.The Philippines is not oblivious to this developing paradigm. The Philippines is considered tohave one of the most advanced social protection (SP) systems in the East Asia Pacific region.These SP systems are designed to help poor households manage risk and shocks. Currently,there are different types of cash transfers being used by the Department of Social Welfare andDevelopment (DSWD) programs. These include: (1) the Pantawid Pamilya conditional cashtransfer (CCT) program; (2) the Sustainable Livelihood Program (SLP) using cash-for-work; and,(3) the National Community Driven Development program (NCDD). These programs use variousmodalities and mechanism for cash transfers in different stages of the post-disaster timeline.However, the SP element of DSWD's disaster risk management and response interventions canbe significantly improved especially if to be used as a response tool during disasters. -
Publication
The Scars of Civil War: The Long-Term Welfare Effects of the Salvadoran Armed Conflict
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-10)This paper estimates the long-term effects on human capital accumulation and subsequent labor market outcomes of in utero and early childhood exposure to the civil war in El Salvador (1980-92), the second longest and deadliest civil conflict in Central America. Identification is obtained from spatial and intertemporal variation in the intensity of the conflict drawn from historical archive data comprising records of human casualties, disappearances, and refugees. The results show that people born in highly violent areas during the civil war saw a reduction in their probability of being employed by 6 percentage points, and of getting a high-skilled job by 5 percentage points, 20 to 30 years after it happened. The civil war also reduced their education by 0.8 year, as well as their enrollment and literacy rates. Subgroup analysis indicates that exposed males and indigenous groups experienced the largest losses in human capital and had weaker performance in the labor market. -
No Thumbnail AvailablePublication
Business and Human Development in the Base of the Pyramid: Exploring Challenges and Opportunities with Market Heat Maps
( 2011)Roughly a little under half of the world's population is mired in poverty, most in the developing world--about 3 billion people constitute the global base of the economic pyramid. Building on earlier work by Banerjee and Duflo (2007), this paper uses survey data from three countries in order to provide a clear visualization of the spatial dimension of the economic lives of the poor and their access to markets. It develops a framework that could be used to map market inclusiveness, and then applies this to a number of markets that are critical to reducing poverty and increasing human welfare: water, credit and telecommunications. These "market heat maps" help to illustrate the extent of the challenges and in some cases reveal potential opportunities in growing more inclusive markets for the poor.