Person:
Angel-Urdinola, Diego F.
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Labor markets,
Employment policy,
Social protection,
Training policies,
Gender,
Minimum wages,
Social safety nets,
Poverty
Degrees
ORCID
External Links
Departments
Global Practice for Social Protection and Labor, The World Bank
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
January 31, 2023
Biography
Diego F. Angel-Urdinola is a senior economist in the Human Development Department of the Middle East and North Africa Region at the World Bank, where he conducts applied research and operational work in the areas of social protection, labor markets, gender, and human development. He has contributed to operational research for various developing countries, especially in Latin America, Europe and Central Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and North Africa. He has published articles in various academic and nonacademic publications, including the
Journal of Economic Inequality,
Journal of International Development,
IZA Journal of Labor Policy,
Economics Bulletin, and
Labour, as well as several books and working paper series. He holds a PhD in economics from Georgetown University.
Publication Search Results
1 - 10 of 27
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Publication
The Middle East and North Africa Community of Practice on Employment and Social Safety Nets
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-03)The World Bank is now supporting and facilitating the establishment of the first community of practice in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region in the area of employment and social safety nets. This community will provide a space where practitioners from MENA to share their operational experience, knowledge, and best practices on how best to improve delivery of social policy. One channel to improve the design and implementation of social programs is to foster south-south knowledge exchanges, which have proven to successfully contribute to reform of social programs and systems in other developing regions. These knowledge exchanges can take various formats; such as study tours, audio-conferences, workshops, and e-platforms. The first meeting was an attempt to gather an initial pool of practitioners in the region to define the topics to be discussed by community and to define the tools that will be employed to help and facilitate knowledge exchanges. A virtual network using the World Bank's collaboration for development platform helped practitioners stay in contact with each other, initiate discussions, ask questions, and share information on regional best practices. -
Publication
Striving for Better Jobs : The Challenge of Informality in the Middle East and North Africa
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-08-26)Economic growth has been sustained for many years pre-crisis in the region, but this has not resulted in the creation of an adequate number of jobs and has succeeded, at best, in generating low-quality, informal jobs. The report addresses one margin of exclusion: informal employment and the vulnerabilities and lack of opportunities associated with it. The report analyzes the constraints that prevent informal workers from becoming formal and discusses policy options to effectively address these constraints. This report looks at informality through a human development angle and focuses particularly on informal employment. Informality is a complex phenomenon, comprising unpaid workers and workers without social security or health insurance coverage, small or micro-firms that operate outside the regulatory framework and large registered firms that may partially evade corporate taxes and social security contributions. The first section provides a detailed profile of informal workers in the region. The second section describes the characteristics of informality in micro-firms that operate outside the regulatory framework and in larger firms that do not fully comply with social security contribution requirements and tax obligations. The third section presents informality and the firm. The fourth section focuses on informality: choice or exclusion? The fifth section discusses policy options for effectively expanding coverage of health insurance and pension systems and promoting the creation of better quality jobs. -
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Labor Markets and School-to-Work Transition in Egypt: Diagnostics, Constraints, and Policy Framework
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2010-07)Despite substantial improvements in labor market outcomes in recent years (in raising employment and participation and in lowering unemployment), unemployment rates in Egypt remain exceedingly high among youth2 entering the labor market for the first time. A slow school-to-work transition remains the main reason behind high unemployment rates. The youth unemployment rate in Egypt, at 24 percent in year 2006, is high for international standards- though similar to those in North Africa. Moreover, youth entering the labor market for the first time account for about 82 percent of the countrys unemployed workers. -
Publication
Morocco: Social Protection and Labor Diagnostic
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-05-26)Main macroeconomic indicators in Morocco (notably economic growth, inflation) are expected to remain appropriate in the short-medium term. Despite negative impacts in the economy due to developments in the Eurozone, in particular sovereign debt crises in Spain and Italy, among other countries, economic growth in Morocco has been positive averaging 4.3 percent per year between years 2010 and 2013. Morocco has displayed important progress in the Bank’s twin objectives of reducing poverty and promoting shared prosperity. Inequality and vulnerability remain important challenges. Despite some notable progress on key human development indicators, Morocco still lags behind in health and education achievements. One of the key challenges for Morocco is that economic growth has not achieved enough employment growth to the needs of a saturated labor market. To achieve faster economic growth, Morocco will need a structural transformation of its economy, with a focus on broadening economic opportunities. Low employment rates in Morocco are largely explained by very low rates of participation of women in the labor force. Most employment creation in Morocco happens in the services and construction sectors, while the agriculture and manufacturing sectors (as these sectors become more productive and substitute labor by capital) actually suffer from net job destruction of approximately 35 thousand jobs per year. -
Publication
Using Student and Teacher Assessments to Design More Pertinent In-Service Teacher Training: The Case of Ecuador
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-08)The development of pertinent and effective in-service teacher training remains a policy challenge for many countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Ecuador stands out as a country in the region that has made significant investments in teacher training in the past decade. However, most in-service training provision has been designed without enough elements to properly address teachers' skills gaps. This paper proposes a roadmap for improving the design of in-service teacher training in Ecuador using available data from student and teacher assessments. Although countries in the region have made important efforts to carry out periodic evaluations of student and teacher performance, the data resulting from these evaluations are rarely used to guide teacher development programs. The analysis presented in this paper suggests that doing so has the potential to raise program pertinence while allowing the prioritization of investments in teachers and students with the greatest needs. -
Publication
Labor Markets and School-to-Work Transition in Egypt : Diagnostics, Constraints, and Policy Framework
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2010-11)Analysis in this policy note indicates a rapid deterioration in employment opportunities for young individuals transitioning from school to work in Egypt. Despite substantial improvements in labor market outcomes in recent years (in raising employment and participation and in lowering unemployment), unemployment rates in Egypt remain exceedingly high among youth entering the labor market for the first time. A slow school-to-work transition remains the main reason behind high unemployment rates. Young entrants to the labor market have become more educated than ever before: the share of the working-age-population with university education in Egypt has increased significantly between the years 1998 and 2006 (from 14% to 19% among men and from 9% to 14% among women). However, youth are unable to capitalize the time and resources invested in their education as the labor market is not providing enough good-quality jobs for them. To cope with scarce formal jobs, young-educated workers are opting to work in the informal sector and/or withdraw from the labor force, which is contributing to a deadweight loss of recent investments in education. There are three key factors that seem to explain why school-to-job transition remains low in Egypt: investments in the private sector remain low and capital intensive, new graduates are not equipped with the skills demanded by the private sector, and the public sector still provides incentives for educated individuals (mainly women) to queue for private sector jobs. There are several policy options used in the international context to further enhance the performance of the labor market; such as enhancing employability of new entrants, reforming the technical and vocational training system, and designing targeted programs aiming to boost labor demand. -
Publication
Public Employment Services and Publicly Provided ALMPs in Egypt
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-01)This note presents a brief overview of Public Employment Services (PES) in Egypt and describes the institutional framework for public delivery of Active Labor Market Programs (ALMPs) in Egypt. Egypt has the fourth largest economy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region and has implemented economic reforms since 2004 which have led to some economic growth (e.g. a fast growing technology sector and the country has been recognized as one of the top offshoring destinations for international companies). -
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Can a Minimum Wage Increase Have an Adverse Impact on Inequality? Evidence from Two Latin American Economies
( 2008)This paper uses a semiparametric model to analyze the impact of an increase in the real minimum wage on inequality in Colombia between 1995 and 1999 and in Paraguay between 1993 and 2000-2001. Simulations suggest that if the employment effects of the minimum wage increase are ignored, the underlying policies would contribute to reduce earnings inequality in Colombia and would be inequality neutral in Paraguay. By considering the drop in wages of those who lost their jobs, simulations suggest that in both countries the policy in question would increase earnings inequality under some assumptions about the employment elasticity of the minimum wage and the new level of earnings unemployed workers rely upon. While these findings do not mean that minimum wage increases in LDCs (Less Developed Countries) necessarily have adverse distributional affects, they suggest that minimum wage policy should be implemented with care depending on how sensitive employment is to wage increases. -
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Do Subsidized Health Programs in Armenia Increase Utilization among the Poor?
( 2008)This article analyzes the extent to which the Basic Benefit Package (BBP), a subsidized health program in Armenia, increases utilization and affordability of outpatient health care among the poor. We find that beneficiaries of the BBP pay approximately 45 % less in fees for doctor visits (and display 36 % higher outpatient utilization rates) than eligible users not receiving the BBP. However, even among BBP beneficiaries the level of outpatient health care utilization remains low. This occurs because the program mainly provides discounted fees for doctor visits, but fees do not constitute the main financial constraint for users. Our estimates suggest that other non-fee expenditures, such as prescription medicines, constitute a more significant financial constraint and are not subsidized by the BBP. As a result, outpatient health care remains expensive even for BBP beneficiaries. -
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Micro-Determinants of Informal Employment in the Middle East and North Africa Region
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-01)This note assesses the main micro?determinants of informal employment in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region from a human development stand point. It's main purpose is to quantify the patterns of labor informality (defined as the share of all employment with no access to social security) according to age, gender, education level, employment sector, profession, marital status, employment status, and geographic area in a selected group of countries in the region. Results indicate that the size of the public sector and the size of the agriculture sector are perhaps the main correlates of informality in the region. Countries where agricultural employment still constitutes a large share of overall employment (such as Morocco and Yemen) are associated with higher levels of overall informality. On the contrary, countries with larger public sectors and more urbanized such as Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon, display lower levels of overall informality. The existence of a large public sector, still associated with generous benefits and better employment quality, creates an important segmentation between public and private employment in many MENA countries. Informality rates are very high among youth between ages fifteen and twenty-four. After age twenty-four, informality decreases rapidly until individuals reach prime working age (forty to forty?five years). This rapid decrease in informality rates goes hand in hand with a rapid increase in public sector employment, suggesting that informal workers enter into public sector jobs as they move from youth into adulthood. Results also indicate that the average worker in the informal sector is disadvantaged versus the average worker in the formal sector, as they are uncovered against social risks and are generally employed in low-productivity/low pay jobs.