Person:
Onder, Harun

Macroeconomics, Trade & Investment Global Practice, World Bank

Fields of Specialization

Forced displacement, International trade policy, Demographic transitions, Economics of conflict

ORCID

0000-0002-0491-688X

External Links

Google
RePEc

Departments

Macroeconomics, Trade & Investment Global Practice, World Bank

Last updated January 31, 2023

Biography

Harun Onder is a Senior Economist at the World Bank. His work focuses on the economics of conflict and forced displacement, international trade policy, economic implications of demographic transitions, and challenges faced by natural resource-rich economies. He has provided analysis, training, and technical assistance to many governments in Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. Harun was the lead author of World Bank flagship reports “The Mobility Displaced Syrians”, “The Toll of War”, and “The Economics of Hosting Refugees”. His technical work has been published in leading academic journals including the Journal of International Economics and the Journal of Development Economics, and his contributions have been widely featured in media outlets including BBC, CNN, NPR, The Financial Times, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, among others. Harun received Executive Education in development policy at Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and he holds a Ph.D. degree in Economics from Florida International University.

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Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 18

Growth and Volatility Analysis Using Wavelets

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-08) Maslova, Inga ; Onder, Harun ; Sanghi, Apurva

The magnitude and persistence of growth in gross domestic product are topics of intense scrutiny by economists. Although the existing techniques provide a range of tools to study the nature of growth and volatility time series, these usually come with shortcomings, including the need to arbitrarily define acceleration spells, and focus on a particular frequency at a time. This paper explores the application of "wavelet-based" techniques to study the time-varying nature of growth and volatility. These techniques lend themselves to a more robust analysis of short-term and long-term determinants of growth and volatility than the traditional decomposition techniques, as demonstrated on a small sample of countries. In addition to having desirable technical advantages, such as localization in time and frequency and the ability to work with non-stationary series, these techniques also make it possible to accurately decompose the association between growth trajectories of different countries over different time horizons. Such "co-movement" analysis can provide policy makers with important insights on regional integration, growth poles, and how short and long term developments in other countries affect their domestic economy.
Macroeconomic and Fiscal Implications of Population Aging in Bulgaria

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-02) Onder, Harun ; Pestieau, Pierre ; Ley, Eduardo

Bulgaria is in the midst of a serious demographic transition that will shrink its population at one of the highest rates in the world within the next few decades. This study analyzes the macroeconomic and fiscal implications of this demographic transition by using a long-term model, which integrates the demographic projections with social security, fiscal and real economy dimensions in a consistent manner. The simulations suggest that, even under fairly optimistic assumptions, Bulgaria's demographic transition will exert significant fiscal pressures and depress the economic growth in the medium and long term. However, the results also demonstrate that the Government of Bulgaria can play a significant role in mitigating some of these effects. Policies that induce higher labor force participation, promote productivity and technological improvement, and provide better education outcomes are found to counteract the negative consequences of the demographic shift.
Punjab Debt Sustainability Analysis

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-10) Manoel, Alvaro ; Refaqat, Saadia ; Onder, Harun ; Ashraf, Mehwish

Punjab is Pakistan's most populous and economically vibrant province. Its fiscal health, therefore, is crucial to the fiscal stability and economic development of Pakistan as a whole. By end-June 2011, Punjab's outstanding debt stood at Rs. 413 billion, or 4.0 percent of Gross Subnational Domestic Product (GSDP). The low debt level is perhaps not surprising given the historical barriers to borrowing imposed at the federal level. But this has changed profoundly with enactment of the 18th Constitutional Amendment which has allowed provinces to borrow domestically and externally, subject to limits imposed by National Economic Council (NEC). This change has heightened the need to examine what Punjab owes and the question of provincial debt sustainability in general. As there is no threshold defined for subnational debt levels, this sustainability analysis considers unsustainable fiscal policies and borrowing strategy to be those that lead to an explosive accumulation of debt such that it would jeopardize the normal provision of services by the province. The analysis projects the debt outlook through the fiscal years 2012 to 2021, using the Government of Punjab's current Medium-Term Fiscal Framework (MTFF) as the base. The MTFF for fiscal 2012 anticipates fiscal surpluses in medium term, driven mainly by an improvement in provincial finances due to a favorable Seventh National Finance Commission Award, and thus concludes that the debt outlook is sustainable through fiscal 2021: the debt-to-GSDP ratio gradually declines over the next 10 years, to 1.2 percent, from 4.0 percent; the interest payments-to-revenues ratio decreases to 0.9 percent, from 3.0 percent; while the debt service-to-revenues ratio rises by a modest 0.3 percent to 3.3 percent. The analysis then explores some potential vulnerability to economic and fiscal shocks. Punjab's debt sustainability to be fairly robust to most shocks, except when the individual shocks are combined. However, the probability of combined shock remains very low.
Services, Inequality, and the Dutch Disease

(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2014-07) Battaile, Bill ; Chisik, Richard ; Onder, Harun

This paper shows how Dutch disease effects may arise solely from a shift in demand following a natural resource discovery. The natural resource wealth increases the demand for non-tradable luxury services due to non-homothetic preferences. Labor that could be used to develop other non-resource tradable sectors is pulled into these service sectors. As a result, manufactures and other tradable goods are more likely to be imported, and learning and productivity improvements accrue to the foreign exporters. However, once the natural resources diminish, there is less income to purchase the services and non-resource tradable goods. Thus, the temporary gain in purchasing power translates into long-term stagnation. As opposed to conventional models where income distribution has no effect on economic outcomes, an unequal distribution of the rents from resource wealth further intensifies the Dutch disease dynamics within this framework.
Incomplete Integration and Contagion of Debt Distress in Economic Unions

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-12) Karayalcin, Cem ; Onder, Harun

This paper compares different fiscal integration schemes on the basis of their ability to finance public investments and resilience to debt distress and contagion. Complete integration schemes, where a central authority chooses the level of public investments with productivity-enhancing externalities across different jurisdictions, are shown to be superior to incomplete integration schemes, where member governments choose public investments unilaterally. As a result, equilibrium income is greater for citizens of member states under a complete integration scheme. Moreover, complete integration schemes are shown to be more resilient to idiosyncratic shocks and more effective in limiting contagion of debt distress. This is mainly because the central authority can credibly borrow more without risking default than member states taken together can and it can "transfer resilience" across them if needed. These findings inform discussions on structural aspects of secular stagnation in Europe by emphasizing a potential challenge in the institutional design of fiscal responsibilities.
Fiscal Policy Issues in the Aging Societies

( 2015-03) Bogetic, Zeljko ; Onder, Harun ; Onal, Anil ; Skrok, Emilia ; Schwartz, Anita ; Winkler, Hernan

Aging may be one of the most far-reaching processes defining the economic, fiscal, and social changes societies are likely to experience over the next 40 years. The demographic consequences of aging will have a dramatic impact on labor markets, economic growth, social structures--and government budgets. These issues have gained urgency after the second largest global recession in the past 100 years. Based on a broad comparative analysis of countries that include the EU and non-EU European and Central Asian countries, as well as several case studies and model simulations, the paper seeks to provide broad answers--tailored in part to distinct groups of countries according to their aging-fiscal profiles--to major questions facing governments budgets in aging societies: What are the fiscal-aging profiles of Western European, emerging European, and Central Asian countries? In other words, how good or bad is their fiscal situation--"initial conditions"--in view of their emerging aging-related problems? What kind of public spending pressures are likely to emerge in the coming decades, and what will be their relative importance? How do countries compare in terms of the possible impacts of aging on growth and long-term debt sustainability? What can be learned from in-depth and comparative case studies of aging, fiscal sustainability, and fiscal reform? Are there good-practice examples--countries doing things right at the right time--that may offer lessons for the others? And, perhaps most important, given the need for long-term fiscal consolidation for many countries, what kind of revenue and expenditure policy agendas are likely to emerge to mitigate the effects of aging? A key policy conclusion is that countries should aim for early rather than delayed reforms dealing with long-term aging pressures. The urgency is accentuated by the debt situations and/or adverse debt and demographic dynamics in almost all countries but also by the evolving voter preferences. As societies age and voting preferences increasingly reflect the political will of the older population, it will become more difficult to enact the necessary reforms ensuring social and fiscal sustainability.
Aging, Social Security Design, and Capital Accumulation

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-09) Dedry, Antoine ; Onder, Harun ; Pestieau, Pierre

This paper analyzes the impact of aging on capital accumulation and welfare in a country with a sizable unfunded social security system. Using a two-period overlapping generation model with endogenous retirement decisions, the paper shows that the type of aging and the type of unfunded social security system are important in understanding this impact. The analysis compares two types of demographic changes, declining fertility and increasing longevity; three types of pensions, defined contributions, defined benefits, and defined annuities; as well as mandatory and optimal retirement systems to investigate the differences in implications of aging.
The True Cost of War

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-10) Artuc, Erhan ; Gomez Parra, Nicolas ; Onder, Harun

Measuring the economic impact of a war is a daunting task. Common indicators like casualties, infrastructure damages, and gross domestic product effects provide useful benchmarks, but they fail to capture the complex welfare effects of wars. This paper proposes a new method to estimate the welfare impact of conflicts and remedy common data constraints in conflict-affected environments. The method first estimates how agents regard spatial welfare differentials by voting with their feet, using pre-conflict data. Then, it infers a lower-bound estimate for the conflict-driven welfare shock from partially observed post-conflict migration patterns. A case study of the conflict in Eastern Ukraine between 2014 and 2019 shows a large lower-bound welfare loss for Donetsk residents equivalent to between 7.28 and 24.79 percent of life-time income depending on agents’ time preferences.
The Economics of Hosting Refugees: A Host Community Perspective from Turkana

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-03) Alix-Garcia, Jennifer ; Artuc, Erhan ; Onder, Harun

In 1991, thousands of South Sudanese boys walked into Kenya. Having fled war in their own countries, about 20 thousand of these "lost boys" first tried taking refuge in Ethiopia. With no real options to stay, many were killed on their walk back to South Sudan or while attempting to swim the crocodile infested River Gilo, before entering Kenya. Between 7 thousand and 10 thousand were estimated to have made it alive to Kenya at that time, with no possessions besides the clothes on their back. The arrival of these "lost boys" eventually transformed how the Kenyan Government approached the issue of refugees. The Government had allowed for the integration of arriving refugees into the Kenyan population up until that point. The arrival of these "lost boys" marked the beginning of the encampment strategy in Kenya. From that point onwards, the refugee screening process was turned over from the Kenyan government to the United Nations High Commission for Refugess (UNHCR) . The boys were initially housed in a temporary camp located closer to the Sudanese border, in the town of Lokichogio. In June of 1002, the camp was relocated farther south to Kakuma Town, in the central Turkana region, where it has remained since. Flash-forward 35 years, with more than 180 thousand refuges, the Kakuma Refugee Camp stands as one of the largest urban settlements on the plains of Turkana. The camp currently houses individuals from different nationalities, primarily Sudanese, Somalis and Ethiopians. There is a significant internal economy of goods and services, bolstered by the goods (especially food) and public services provided by international organizations.
"Yes" in My Backyard?: The Economics of Refugees and Their Social Dynamics in Kakuma, Kenya

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-12-01) Sanghi, Apurva ; Onder, Harun ; Vemuru, Varalakshmi

This report comes at a crucial time when the unprecedented global refugee crisis, most notably in Europe and the Mediterranean, has not only focused the world’s attention on the plight of refugees, but has also led to the politicization of refugee influxes. With an average of 24 people worldwide being displaced from their homes every minute of every day (UNHCR 2016), the debate surrounding the refugee crises is on the minds of many, ranging from governments and policy-makers to citizens, refugees, and host communities alike. Worldwide displacement is currently at an all-time high as war and persecution increase; one in every 113 people is now either a refugee, internally displaced, or seeking asylum (UNHCR 2016). In the past five years, at least 15 conflicts have erupted or reignited, and while protracted and harrowing wars have broken out in the Middle East, eight of these conflicts have been in Africa (Cote d’Ivoire, Central African Republic, Libya, Mali, Northeastern Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, and Burundi) (UNHCR 2015). To compound matters, developing countries such as Lebanon, Jordan, Ethiopia, and Kenya are now hosting the largest share of refugees: they are home to nearly 90 percent of the world’s refugees (UNHCR 2016). This report, which provides an original analysis of the economic and social impact of refugees in Kenya’s Kakuma refugee camp on their Turkana hosts, therefore comes at an opportune time and could resonate with governments and policy makers beyond Kenya’s borders. In particular, the methodology authors have developed enables us to run policy scenarios in a rigorous manner, ranging from encampment to decampment (i.e. camp closure) scenarios, and the potential to apply this methodology in other refugee situations around the world is particularly advantageous.