Person:
Ferreira, Francisco H.G.

Development Research Group

Fields of Specialization

Inequality and Shared Prosperity, Poverty Measurement and Analysis, Social Protection and Growth

Departments

Development Research Group

Last updated January 31, 2023

Biography

Francisco H. G. Ferreira is a Senior Adviser in the World Bank’s Development Research Group, where he oversees the Bank’s research programs on poverty and inequality. He was formerly the Bank’s Chief Economist for the Africa Region, and has also served as Deputy Chief Economist for Latin America and the Caribbean, and as co-Director of the World Development Report 2006, on Equity and Development. Francisco is also a non-resident Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA, Bonn), and has published widely in the fields of poverty and inequality in developing countries. He was awarded the Haralambos Simeonides and the Adriano Romariz Duarte Prizes by the Brazilian Economic and Econometric Societies respectively, and the Kendricks Prize by the International Association for Research in Income and Wealth. Francisco serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Economic Inequality (where he was previously Editor in Chief), the Review of Income and Wealth, and the World Bank Economic Review. Francisco has taught at the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro and at the Paris School of Economics. He was born and raised in São Paulo, Brazil, and holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the London School of Economics.

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Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 57

Trade Liberalization, Employment Flows, and Wage Inequality in Brazil

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-01) Ferreira, Francisco H.G. ; Leite, Phillippe G. ; Wai-Poi, Matthew

Using nationally representative, economywide data, this paper investigates the relative importance of trade-mandated effects on industry wage premia; industry and economywide skill premia; and employment flows in accounting for changes in the wage distribution in Brazil during the 1988-95 trade liberalization. Unlike in other Latin American countries, trade liberalization appears to have made a significant contribution toward a reduction in wage inequality. These effects have not occurred through changes in industry-specific (wage or skill) premia. Instead, they appear to have been channeled through substantial employment flows across sectors and formality categories. Changes in the economywide skill premium are also important.
The Measurement of Inequality of Opportunity : Theory and an Application to Latin America

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-07) Ferreira, Francisco H.G. ; Gignoux, Jérémie

What part of the inequality observed in a particular country is due to unequal opportunities, rather than to differences in individual efforts or luck? This paper estimates a lower bound for the opportunity share of inequality in labor earnings, household income per capita and household consumption per capita in six Latin American countries. Following John Roemer, the authors associate inequality of opportunity with outcome differences that can be accounted for by morally irrelevant pre-determined circumstances, such as race, gender, place of birth, and family background. Thus defined, unequal opportunities account for between 24 and 50 percent of inequality in consumption expenditure in the sample. Brazil and Central America are more opportunity-unequal than Colombia, Ecuador, or Peru. "Opportunity profiles," which identify the social groups with the most limited opportunity sets, are shown to be distinct from poverty profiles: ethnic origin and the geography of birth are markedly more important as determinants of opportunity deprivation than of outcome poverty, particularly in Brazil, Guatemala, and Peru.
Global Poverty and Inequality : A Review of the Evidence

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-05) Ferreira, Francisco H.G. ; Ravallion, Martin

Drawing on a compilation of data from household surveys representing 130 countries, many over a period of 25 years, this paper reviews the evidence on levels and recent trends in global poverty and income inequality. It documents the negative correlations between both poverty and inequality indices, on the one hand, and mean income per capita on the other. It points to the dominant role of Asia in accounting for the bulk of the world's poverty reduction since 1981. The evolution of global inequality in the last decades is also described, with special emphasis on the different trends of inequality within and between countries. The statistical relationships between growth, inequality and poverty are discussed, as is the correlation between inequality and the growth elasticity of poverty reduction. Some of the recent literature on the drivers of distributional change in developing countries is also reviewed.
Aggregate Economic Shocks, Child Schooling, and Child Health

(World Bank, 2009-09-30) Ferreira, Francisco H.G. ; Schady, Norbert

Do aggregate income shocks, such as those caused by macroeconomic crises or droughts, reduce child human capital? The answer to this question has important implications for public policy. If shocks reduce investments in children, they may have a long-lasting impact on poverty and its intergenerational transmission. The authors develop a simple framework to analyze the effects of aggregate economic shocks on child schooling and health. They show that the expected effects are theoretically ambiguous because of a tension between income and substitution effects. They then review the recent empirical literature on the subject. In richer countries, like the United States, child health and education outcomes are counter-cyclical: they improve during recessions. In poorer countries, mostly in Africa and low-income Asia, the outcomes are procyclical: infant mortality rises and school enrollment and nutrition fall during recessions. In the middle-income countries of Latin America, the picture is more nuanced: health outcomes are generally procyclical and education outcomes counter-cyclical. Each of these findings is consistent with the simple conceptual framework. The authors discuss possible implications for expenditure allocation.
Aggregate Economic Shocks, Child Schooling and Child Health

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-08) Ferreira, Francisco H.G. ; Schady, Norbert

Do aggregate economic shocks, such as those caused by macroeconomic crises or droughts, reduce child human capital? The answer to this question has important implications for public policy. If shocks reduce investments in children, they may transmit poverty from one generation to the next. This paper uses a simple framework to analyze the effects of aggregate economic shocks on child schooling and health. It shows that the expected effects are ambiguous, because of a tension between income and substitution effects. The paper then reviews the recent empirical literature on the subject. In richer countries, like the United States, child health and education outcomes are counter-cyclical: they improve during recessions. In poorer countries, mostly in Africa and low-income Asia, the outcomes are pro-cyclical: infant mortality rises, and school enrollment and nutrition fall during recessions. In the middle-income countries of Latin America, the picture is more nuanced: health outcomes are generally pro-cyclical, and education outcomes counter-cyclical. Each of these findings is consistent with the simple conceptual framework. The paper discusses possible implications for expenditure allocation.
Poverty Reduction without Economic Growth? Explaining Brazil's Poverty Dynamics, 1985-2004

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-12) Ferreira, Francisco H.G. ; Leite, Phillippe G. ; Ravallion, Martin

Brazil's slow pace of poverty reduction over the last two decades reflects both low growth and a low growth elasticity of poverty reduction. Using GDP data disaggregated by state and sector for a twenty-year period, this paper finds considerable variation in the poverty-reducing effectiveness of growth-across sectors, across space, and over time. Growth in the services sector was substantially more poverty-reducing than was growth in either agriculture or industry. Growth in industry had very different effects on poverty across different states and its impact varied with initial conditions related to human development and worker empowerment. The determinants of poverty reduction changed around 1994: positive growth rates and a greater (absolute) elasticity with respect to agricultural growth contributed to faster poverty reduction. But because there was so little of it, economic growth played a relatively small role in accounting for Brazil's poverty reduction between 1985 and 2004. The taming of hyperinflation (in 1994) and substantial expansions in social security and social assistance transfers, beginning in 1988, accounted for a larger share of the overall reduction in poverty.
Beyond Oaxaca-Blinder: Accounting for Differences in Household Income Distributions Across Countries

(World Bank, Washington, D.C., 2002-04-30) Bourguignon, Francois ; Ferreira, Francisco H.G. ; Leite, Phillippe G.

The authors develop a microeconometric method to account for differences across distributions of household income. Going beyond the determination of earnings in labor markets, they also estimate statistical models for occupational choice and for conditional distributions of education, fertility, and nonlabor incomes. The authors import combinations of estimated parameters from these models to simulate counterfactual income distributions. This allows them to decompose differences between functionals of two income distributions (such as inequality or poverty measures) into shares because of differences in the structure of labor market returns (price effects), differences in the occupational structure, and differences in the underlying distribution of assets (endowment effects). The authors apply the method to the differences between the Brazilian income distribution and those of Mexico and the United States, and find that most of Brazil's excess income inequality is due to underlying inequalities in the distribution of two key endowments: access to education and to sources of nonlabor income, mainly pensions.
Inefficient Lobbying, Populism and Oligarchy

(World Bank, Washington, D.C., 2004-03) Campante, Filipe R. ; Ferreira, Francisco H.G.

The authors investigate the theoretical effects of lobbying and pressure group activities on both economic efficiency and on equity. Looking at lobbying as a political activity that takes place alongside production, they find that lobbies may generate economic inefficiency as part of the process of shifting the allocation of government expenditures in their favor. Outcomes of this non-electoral political process will always be biased toward the group with a comparative advantage in politics, rather than in production. In a context where the main political conflict is one between "the rich" and "the poor," political equilibria may be either populist (inefficiently pro-poor) or oligarchic (inefficiently pro-rich), depending on each group's lobbying effectiveness.
Inequality in Latin America : Breaking with History?

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2004) De Ferranti, David ; Perry, Guillermo E. ; Ferreira, Francisco H.G. ; Walton, Michael

With the exception of Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean has been one of the regions of the world with the greatest inequality. This report explores why the region suffers from such persistent inequality, identifies how it hampers development, and suggests ways to achieve greater equity in the distribution of wealth, incomes and opportunities. The study draws on data from 20 countries based on household surveys covering 3.6 million people, and reviews extensive economic, sociological and political science studies on inequality in Latin America. To address the deep historical roots of inequality in Latin America, and the powerful contemporary economic, political and social mechanisms that sustain it, Inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean outlines four broad areas for action by governments and civil society groups to break this destructive pattern: 1) Build more open political and social institutions, that allow the poor and historically subordinate groups to gain a greater share of agency, voice and power in society. 2) Ensure that economic institutions and policies seek greater equity, through sound macroeconomic management and equitable, efficient crisis resolution institutions, that avoid the large regressive redistributions that occur during crises, and that allow for saving in good times to enhance access by the poor to social safety nets in bad times. 3) Increase access by the poor to high-quality public services, especially education, health, water and electricity, as well as access to farmland and the rural services. Protect and enforce the property rights of the urban poor. 4) Reform income transfer programs so that they reach the poorest families.
Can the Distributional Impacts of Macroeconomic Shocks be Predicted? A Comparison of the Performance of Macro-Micro Models with Historical Data for Brazil

(World Bank, Washington, D.C., 2004-05) Ferreira, Francisco H.G. ; Leite, Phillippe George ; Pereira da Silva, Luiz A. ; Picchetti, Paulo

What was the impact of Brazil's 1998-99 currency crisis-which resulted in a change of exchange rate regime and a large real devaluation-on the occupational structure of the labor force and the distribution of incomes? Would it have been possible to predict such effects ahead of the crisis? The authors present an integrated macro-micro model of the Brazilian economy in 1998. The model consists of an applied general equilibrium macroeconometric component, connected through a set of linkage aggregate variables to a microeconomic model of household incomes. The authors use this framework to predict the employment and distributional consequences of the 1999 Brazilian currency crisis, based on 1998 household survey data. They then test the predictive performance of the model by comparing its simulated results with the actual household survey data observed in 1999. In addition to the fully integrated macro-micro model, the authors also test the performances of the microeconometric model on its own, and of a "representative household groups" approach. They find that the integrated macro-micro econometric model, while still inaccurate on many dimensions, can actually predict the broad pattern of the incidence of changes in household incomes across the distribution reasonably well, and much better than the alternative approaches. The authors conclude that further experimentation with these tools might be of considerable potential usefulness to policymakers.