Person:
Medvedev, Denis

Finance, Competitiveness and Innovation

Fields of Specialization

International trade, Jobs, Inequality, Poverty, Private Sector Development, Financial Sector Development

Departments

Finance, Competitiveness and Innovation

Last updated January 31, 2023

Biography

Denis Medvedev manages the Firms, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation unit of the Finance, Competitiveness, and Innovation Global Practice at the World Bank Group. The unit is a team of microeconomists and development practitioners working to provide cutting-edge, evidence-based advice to developing countries around the globe on policies to promote innovation, entrepreneurship, firm upgrading, technology adoption, and productivity. It accomplishes this by carrying out original research, contributing to lending and technical assistance engagements led by the World Bank Group regional units, and collaborating with multilateral institutions as well as bilateral partners and donors. Denis’ own research has recently focused on firm growth and productivity, while his earlier work explored economic growth, income distribution dynamics, international trade, and the Sustainable Development Goals. In his previous assignments at the World Bank, he was responsible for policy dialogue, lending operations, and analytical work across a range of countries in Africa, East and South Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America & the Caribbean, as well as developing forward-looking scenarios for the global economy in the Development Prospects group. He is an author of more than 30 peer-reviewed journal articles, books and book chapters, and World Bank reports. He holds a Ph.D. from the American University.

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Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 23

Do Remittances Have a Flip Side? A General Equilibrium Analysis of Remittances, Labor Supply Responses, and Policy Options for Jamaica

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-03) Bussolo, Maurizio ; Medvedev, Denis

Econometric analysis has established a negative relationship between labor supply and remittances in Jamaica. The authors incorporate this ex-post evidence in a general equilibrium model to investigate economywide effects of increased remittance inflows. In this model, remittances reduce labor force participation by increasing the reservation wages of recipients. This exacerbates the real exchange rate appreciation, hurting Jamaica's export base and small manufacturing import-competing sector. Within the narrow margins of maneuver of a highly indebted government, the authors show that a revenue-neutral policy response of a simultaneous reduction in payroll taxes and increase in sales taxes can effectively counteract these potentially negative effects of remittances.
Challenges to MDG Achievement in Low Income Countries : Lessons from Ghana and Honduras

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-11) Bussolo, Maurizio ; Medvedev, Denis

This paper summarizes the policy lessons from applications of the Maquette for MDG Simulations (MAMS) model to two low income countries: Ghana and Honduras. Results show that costs of MDGs achievement could reach 10-13 percent of GDP by 2015, although, given the observed low productivity in the provision of social services, significant savings may be realized by improving efficiency. Sources of financing also matter: foreign aid inflows can reduce international competitiveness through real exchange appreciation, while domestic financing can crowd out the private sector and slow poverty reduction. Spending a large share of a fixed budget on growth-enhancing infrastructure may mean sacrificing some human development, even if higher growth is usually associated with lower costs of social services. The pursuit of MDGs increases demand for skills: while this encourages higher educational attainments, in the short term this could lead to increased income inequality and a lower poverty elasticity of growth.
Global Growth and Distribution : Are China and India Reshaping the World?

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-11) Bussolo, Maurizio ; De Hoyos, Rafael E. ; Medvedev, Denis ; van der Mensbrugghe, Dominique

Over the past 20 years, aggregate measures of global inequality have changed little even if significant structural changes have been observed. High growth rates of China and India lifted millions out of poverty, while the stagnation in many African countries caused them to fall behind. Using the World Bank's LINKAGE global general equilibrium model and the newly developed Global Income Distribution Dynamics (GIDD) tool, this paper assesses the distribution and poverty effects of a scenario where these trends continue in the future. Even by anticipating a deceleration, growth in China and India is a key force behind the expected convergence of per-capita incomes at the global level. Millions of Chinese and Indian consumers will enter into a rapidly emerging global middle class-a group of people who can afford, and demand access to, the standards of living previously reserved mainly for the residents of developed countries. Notwithstanding these positive developments, fast growth is often characterized by high urbanization and growing demand for skills, both of which result in widening of income distribution within countries. These opposing distributional effects highlight the importance of analyzing global disparities by taking into account - as the GIDD does - income dynamics between and within countries.
Informality and Profitability : Evidence from a New Firm Survey in Ecuador

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-05) Medvedev, Denis ; Oviedo, Ana Maria

This paper estimates the impact of informality on firm profits using a new firm-level survey designed specifically for this study. The survey was administered to about 1,200 firms with 50 employees or less in Ecuador's two largest cities, Quito and Guayaquil, plus two main centers of economic activity near the northern and southern borders. The paper's results confirm that the extent of firms' compliance with a set of regulatory requirements is linked to the perceived costs and benefits of informality, such as the probability of detection by the authorities and the likelihood of being fined. Nonetheless, taking into account the non-random placement of firms along the formality-informality spectrum and controlling for a large set of firm, owner, and location characteristics, the paper finds that more formal firms tend to be more profitable and have higher output per worker. This impact operates, inter alia, through more formal firms' ability to obtain improved access to credit and achieve higher sales by issuing receipts to clients.
Advanced-Country Policies and Emerging-Market Currencies: The Impact of U.S. Tapering on India’s Rupee

(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2015-03) Ikeda, Yuki ; Medvedev, Denis ; Rama, Martin

The global financial crisis and its aftermath have triggered extraordinary policy responses in advanced countries. The impacts of these policy responses—from asset price bubbles to currency depreciations—have often been felt in the developing world. As tapering talk evolves into actual withdrawal of quantitative easing in the United States, and as the Euro Zone launches its own quantitative easing program, there are good reasons to be concerned about the financial stability of emerging economies. India's experience with U.S. tapering offers insights into what to expect. This paper estimates the contribution of external and domestic factors to short-term fluctuations in the value of the Indian rupee between 2004 and 2014, using a rich dynamic model that controls for a large number of exchange rate determinants. The paper finds that a global surprise factor, more than domestic vulnerabilities, was the main driver of the large rupee depreciation in summer 2013. With the surprise factor gone, further normalization of U.S. monetary policy is unlikely to have significant effects on the rupee exchange rate.
Informality and Profitability: Evidence from a New Firm Survey in Ecuador

(Taylor and Francis, 2015-08-13) Medvedev, Denis ; Oviedo, Ana María

This article estimates the impact of informality on profits using a new survey administered to 1,200 firms with less than 50 employees in four cities in Ecuador. The article proposes a novel definition of informality which explicitly recognises that most firms comply with some regulations but not others. Accounting for firm selection and controlling for a large set of firm, owner and location characteristics, the article finds that more formal firms tend to be more profitable and have higher output per worker. This impact operates, inter alia, through improved access to credit and higher sales through issuance of tax receipts.
Internal Migration in Ghana : Determinants and Welfare Impacts

( 2010-04-01) Ackah, Charles ; Medvedev, Denis

Using a recently compiled dataset on migration and remittances in Ghana, this paper estimates the determinants of an individual s likelihood to be an internal migrant and the relationship between internal migration and welfare. The analysis finds that the likelihood to migrate is determined by a combination of individual (pull) and community-level (push) characteristics. The probability of migration is higher for younger and more educated individuals, but communities with higher levels of literacy, higher rates of subsidized medical care, and better access to water and sanitation are less likely to produce migrants. The analysis finds that households with migrants tend to be better off than similar households without migrants, even after controlling for the fact that households with migrants are a non-random sample of Ghanaians. However, the positive relationship is only true for households with at least one migrant in urban areas; the welfare of households with migrants exclusively in rural areas is no different from households without any migrants.
Distributional Effects of the Panama Canal Expansion

( 2011-10-01) Bussolo, Maurizio ; De Hoyos, Rafael E. ; Medvedev, Denis

This paper uses a dynamic macro-micro framework to evaluate the potential distributional effects of the expansion of the Panama Canal. The results show that large macroeconomic effects are only likely during the operations phase (2014 and onward), and income gains are likely to be concentrated at the top of the income distribution. The additional foreign exchange inflows during the construction and operations phases result in the loss of competitiveness of non-Canal sectors (Dutch disease) and in higher domestic prices, which hurt the poorest consumers. In addition, the construction and operation activities increase demand for more educated non-farm formal workers. Although these changes encourage additional labor movement out of agriculture and from the informal to the formal sector, much of the impact is manifested in growing wage disparities and widening income inequality. Using the additional revenues of the Canal expansion in a targeted cash transfer program such as "Red de Oportunidades", the Government of Panama could offset the adverse distributional effects and eradicate extreme poverty.
Firm Recovery during COVID-19: Six Stylized Facts

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-10) Cirera, Xavier ; Cruz, Marcio ; Grover, Arti ; Iacovone, Leonardo ; Medvedev, Denis ; Pereira-Lopez, Mariana ; Reyes, Santiago

Building on prior work that documented the impact of COVID-19 on firms in developing countries using the first wave of Business Pulse Surveys, this paper presents a new set of stylized facts on firm recovery, covering 65,000 observations in 38 countries. This paper suggests that: One, since the outset of the pandemic, some aspects of business performance such as sales show signs of partial recovery. Two, other aspects remain challenging, including persistently high uncertainty and financial fragility. Three, recovery is heterogeneous across firms and more sensitive to firm-level attributes such as size, sector, and initial productivity than to country-level differences in the severity of the initial shock. In particular, larger and more productive firms are recovering faster, with implications for competition policy and allocative efficiency. Four, the decline in jobs has been steeper during the initial shock than the expansion in employment during recovery, raising the risk of a "jobless" recovery pattern. Five, the diffusion of digital technology and product innovation accelerated during the pandemic but did so unevenly, further widening gaps between small and large firms. Six, businesses now have more access to policy support, but poorer countries continue to lag behind and appropriate targeting of firms remains a challenge.
Poverty Effects of Higher Food Prices : A Global Perspective

( 2009-03-01) De Hoyos, Rafael E. ; Medvedev, Denis

The spike in food prices between 2005 and the first half of 2008 has highlighted the vulnerabilities of poor consumers to higher prices of agricultural goods and generated calls for massive policy action. This paper provides a formal assessment of the direct and indirect impacts of higher prices on global poverty using a representative sample of 63 to 93 percent of the population of the developing world. To assess the direct effects, the paper uses domestic food consumer price data between January 2005 and December 2007--when the relative price of food rose by an average of 5.6 percent --to find that the implied increase in the extreme poverty headcount at the global level is 1.7 percentage points, with significant regional variation. To take the second-order effects into account, the paper links household survey data with a global general equilibrium model, finding that a 5.5 percent increase in agricultural prices (due to rising demand for first-generation biofuels) could raise global poverty in 2010 by 0.6 percentage points at the extreme poverty line and 0.9 percentage points at the moderate poverty line. Poverty increases at the regional level vary substantially, with nearly all of the increase in extreme poverty occurring in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.