Person:
Del Carpio, Ximena Vanessa
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Migration,
Skills,
Labor market,
Impact of social policies,
Labor regulations,
Minimum wage,
Education,
Health,
Gender
Degrees
External Links
Departments
Europe and Central Asia
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
January 31, 2023
Biography
Ximena Vanessa Del Carpio is the World Bank Program Leader in Turkey, Europe and Central Asia region. Under the leadership of the Country Director, she leads the program on Human Development Sectors (including Education, Health, Labor Markets, Social Inclusion, Jobs, Youth and Gender) as well as the Refugee Agenda. Prior to this, Del Carpio was a Senior Economist in the Social Protection and Labor global practice in Europe and Central Asia, and East Asia and Pacific. She also worked in the World Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group and the Human Development Network where she focused on evaluating the impact of various economic development programs in countries throughout Latin America and Africa. Before joining the World Bank, Del Carpio worked at the RAND Corporation and at the Minority Business Development Agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce. Del Carpio is originally from Peru, has a PhD in Political Economics from the University of Southern California and holds a dual MBA and Public Policy.
Publication Search Results
1 - 10 of 17
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Publication
Does Child Labor Always Decrease with Income? An Evaluation in the Context of a Development Program in Nicaragua
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-08)This paper investigates the relationship of household income with child labor. The analysis uses a rich dataset obtained in the context of a conditional cash transfer program in a poor region of Nicaragua in 2005 and 2006. The program has a strong productive emphasis and seeks to diversify the work portfolio of beneficiaries while imposing conditionalities on the household. The author develops a simple model that relates child labor to household income, preferences, and production technology. It turns out that child labor does not always decrease with income; the relationship is complex and exhibits an inverted-U shape. Applying the data to the model confirms that the relationship is concave when all children (8-15 years of age) are included in the sample. Expanding the analysis by stratifying the sample by age and gender shows that the relationship holds only for older children, both genders. The author investigates the effect of the conditional cash transfer program on child labor. The results show that the program has a decreasing effect on total hours of work for the full sample of children. Disentangling labor into two types - physically demanding labor and non-physical labor - reveals that the program has opposite effects on each type; it decreases physically demanding labor while increasing participation in non-physical (more intellectually oriented) tasks for children. -
Publication
Minimum Wage Policy : Lessons with a Focus on the ASEAN Region
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-01)This report consists of seven chapters and is divided into three parts. Part one focuses on the minimum wage policy, its historical evolution, and the current institutional context across ASEAN countries. Part two delves into the socio?economic impacts of the minimum wage policy on workers, households, firms, the economy, and the ASEAN region. Part III links the findings from each country to the ASEAN regional context and brings all the analysis together into a policy and operational discussion. Specifically, part one of the report includes this chapter (chapter one) and chapter two. The rest of chapter one summarizes the findings from all chapters in the report and presents an overview of lessons detailed in the final chapter. To provide some background and context for the remainder of the report, chapter two briefly describes the history of minimum wage policy around the world and the theoretical principles behind wage setting and its effects. Part two consists of four chapters. Chapter three, which describes how the minimum wage policy is structured and managed in each ASEAN country, includes details on the objectives that countries have set out for the policy and how the policy is enforced in each country. Chapter four summarizes results from primary and secondary empirical research on the impacts of minimum wage changes on employment, wages, and informal work in the four focus ASEAN countries. The discussion in this chapter takes into account the existence of complementary worker protection programs in each country. Chapter five discusses empirical results on whether changes in the minimum wage policy affect poverty and inequality. Since each country has distinct poverty programs, the discussion takes into account the presence of various social programs that potentially complement income earned from wage labor. Chapter six focuses on how wage and labor costs affect firms, especially in terms of investment decisions and productivity. Due to the limited availability of evidence on the impact of minimum wages on firm performance and private sector activity in ASEAN countries, a large part of the discussion in this chapter includes evidence from non-ASEAN countries. Lastly, this chapter reviews the status of the main labor market institutions legislated in the region and provides some evidence on how other labor institutions might interact with the minimum wage policy to shape its effect. Part three comprises chapter seven, which reflects on the material presented in previous chapters and provides policy?oriented insights. It discusses the political economy of the minimum wage policy and draws out the implications of having such diverse wage policies and institutional arrangements for wage management in an increasingly interlinked regional bloc such as ASEAN. The chapter also synthesizes the lessons learned throughout the report and frames the main labor policy issues to provide guidance for, and elicit action from, policymakers going forward. -
Publication
The Impact of Syrians Refugees on the Turkish Labor Market
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-08)Civil war in Syria has resulted in more than four million refugees fleeing the country, of which 1.8 million have found refuge in Turkey, making it the largest refugee-hosting country worldwide. This paper combines newly available data on the 2014 distribution of Syrian refugees across subregions of Turkey with the Turkish Labour Force Survey, to assess the impact on Turkish labor market conditions. Using a novel instrument, the analysis finds that the refugees, who overwhelmingly do not have work permits, result in the large-scale displacement of informal, low-educated, female Turkish workers, especially in agriculture. While there is net displacement, the inflow of refugees also creates higher-wage formal jobs, allowing for occupational upgrading of Turkish workers. Average Turkish wages have increased primarily as the composition of the employed has changed because of the inflow of refugees. -
Publication
Quality of Management of Firms in Turkey
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2019-04-01)This paper examines the quality of management practices in Turkey and its relation to other firm-level characteristics such as firm performance, competition, and type of ownership. A key finding is that management quality is positively correlated with productivity and quality of jobs across subsectors of manufacturing. But the average score of management quality in Turkey is relatively low compared to peer countries. Factors such as firm size, level of human capital of the workforce, export intensity of the firm, openness to international markets, level of hierarchy in decision making, and degree of managerial autonomy are found to be important determinants of managerial practices in Turkey. Thus, improvements in these dimensions, through relevant policies and incentives, can have a positive effect on the quality of firm management going forward.Such improvements in management practices—particularly in the two dimensions whereTurkey scores lowest: monitoring and targeting—can have positive effects on firmperformance and lead to increases in the creation of quality jobs. -
Publication
Turkey Jobs Diagnostic
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019)The main challenge for achieving a country’s development goals is the creation of more, better and inclusive jobs, as economic growth needs to be accompanied by job growth if the poor are going to benefit to any significant extent. Turkey’s rapid economic growth since the early 2000s has been studied by the World Bank and others, highlighting the role of comprehensive reforms that promoted the country’s integration into the global economy, facilitated structural change, and catalyzed job creation. Therefore, the objective of this report is to present a comprehensive Jobs Diagnostic for Turkey with a view to promoting inclusive economic growth and poverty reduction. The report also aims to lay the evidence base to support policy dialogue in the country and provide input for the development of a national jobs strategy for the delivery of more, better, and inclusive jobs in Turkey. Understanding the factors that influence the creation of more, better and inclusive jobs essentially requires a multisectoral approach. Therefore, this jobs diagnostic aims to assess the relationships between supply- and demand-side factors. -
Publication
Does Cash for School Influence Young Women’s Behavior in the Longer Term? Evidence from Pakistan
( 2011-05-01)The Punjab Female School Stipend Program, a female-targeted conditional cash transfer program in Pakistan, was implemented in response to gender gaps in education. An early evaluation of the program shows that the enrollment of eligible girls in middle school increased in the short term by nearly 9 percentage points. This paper uses regression discontinuity and difference-in-difference analyses to show that five years into the program implementation positive impacts do persist. Beneficiary adolescent girls are more likely to progress through and complete middle school and work less. There is suggestive evidence that participating girls delay their marriage and have fewer births by the time they are 19 years old. Girls who are exposed to the program later, and who are eligible for the benefits given in high school, increase their rates of matriculating into and completing high school. The persistence of impacts can potentially translate into gains in future productivity, consumption, inter-generational human capital accumulation and desired fertility. Lastly, there is no evidence that the program has negative spillover effects on educational outcomes of male siblings. -
Publication
The Impact of Wealth on the Amount and Quality of Child Labor
( 2012-01-01)This paper analyzes to what extent, and under what conditions, an increase in household wealth affects the use of child labor in poor households. It develops a simple theoretical model, which uses child labor, training, and schooling to maximize household income over time, subject to resource constraints. Then, it conducts an empirical analysis using randomized trial data, which were collected for the evaluation of the 2006 Nicaragua conditional cash transfer program. This social program transfers wealth to poor families in rural areas, conditional on children's school attendance and health check-ups. In addition, for one third of the beneficiaries, there is a further wealth transfer to start a non-agricultural business. The paper finds that the conditional cash transfer program affected the volume and quality of child labor, reducing it in the aggregate and steering it towards skill-forming activities. Specifically, the program appears to have reduced the use of child labor for household chores and farm work, while increasing it for the non-traditional, skill-forming activities related to commerce and retail. Moreover, the paper finds that the source behind the increase in skill-forming child labor is not the basic component, which provides a transfer for paying for schooling and health services, but it's the business-grant component, which provides a household grant for the creation of a micro business or a new economic activity. -
Publication
Can a Market-Assisted Land Redistribution Program Improve the Lives of the Poor? Evidence from Malawi
( 2009-10-01)This paper uses a rural household survey dataset collected in 2006 and 2008 to investigate the impact of a market-based land resettlement project in southern Malawi. The program provided a conditional cash and land transfer to poor families to relocate to larger plots of farm land. The average treatment effect of the program is estimated using a difference-in-difference matching technique based on propensity score matching; qualitative information complement the analysis to ensure unobservable characteristics do not bias the findings. As expected, the results show a significant effect on landholdings and agricultural production, with land size increasing and maize production increasing by more than 100 kilograms relative to the control. However, the impacts on food security and asset holdings were mixed. Households that relocated great distances had systematically lower impacts than those households that stayed within their district of origin because they had to adapt to unfamiliar agro-ecological, cultural, and market environments. Impacts also varied across gender of the household head; female-headed beneficiary households increased their productive and consumption assets significantly, while male-headed households increased their asset holdings less so. -
Publication
Are Irrigation Rehabilitation Projects Good for Poor Farmers in Peru?
( 2009-12-09)This paper analyzes changes in agricultural production and economic welfare of farmers in rural Peru resulting from a large irrigation infrastructure rehabilitation project. The analysis uses a ten-year district panel and a spatial regression discontinuity approach to measure the causal effect of the intervention. While general impacts are modest, the analysis shows that the project is progressive--poor farmers consistently benefit more than non-poor farmers. Farmers living in districts with a rehabilitated irrigation site experience positive labor dynamics, in terms of income and agricultural jobs. Poor farmers increase their total income by more than $220 per year compared with the control group, while rich farmers do not experience such an income gain. The results also show crop specialization patterns in the economic status of farm households; poorer farm households increase their production of staple crops, such as beans and potatoes, while non-poor beneficiary farmers cultivate more industrial crops. Findings from this evaluation have important implications for pro-poor policy design in the agricultural sector. -
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Is Irrigation Rehabilitation Good for Poor Farmers? An Impact Evaluation of a Non-experimental Irrigation Project in Peru
( 2011)This paper analyses the effect of a set of irrigation rehabilitation projects conducted over the last 10 years in Peru. The projects were conducted without the aim or the tools for a full-fledged impact evaluation. Nevertheless, this paper attempts an evaluation through the use of alternative data sources such as household surveys and geographic information, a strategy of identification of beneficiaries and control households based on spatial proximity to the projects' sites, and an econometric approach consisting of a double-differencing technique. The empirical analysis is guided and interpreted with the help of a theoretical model that considers the effects of an irrigation project on the distribution of production, employment and income for different types of landowners. The paper concludes that the irrigation projects implemented in Peru had a positive impact on intended beneficiary households, but not in the way it could have been simplistically expected. The project did benefit the poor but not by increasing production in their own small plots but by providing them with better employment opportunities in larger farms.