Person:
Raballand, Gaël
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Public sector reform,
Public spending efficiency,
Aid effectiveness,
Public investment management
Degrees
Departments
Global Practice on Governance, World Bank
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
January 31, 2023
Biography
Gaël Raballand is a lead public sector specialist based in Tanzania. He holds a PhD in economics and a degree in political science and international public law. He co-authored six World Bank books on customs reforms, transport and trade. He worked in Sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa in public sector reform and governance, private sector and trade and transport sectors/practices. He was based in Zambia leading the Governance Partnership Facility and now focuses on public sector reforms (including customs reforms), SOEs reforms, public spending efficiency, public investment management, governance and aid effectiveness issues.
Publication Search Results
1 - 10 of 38
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Publication
The Cost of Being Landlocked : Logistics Costs and Supply Chain Reliability
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-06)A large proportion of the least developed countries are landlocked and their access to world markets depends on the availability of a trade corridor and transit systems. Based on empirical evidence from World Bank projects and assessments in Africa, Central Asia, and elsewhere, this paper proposes a microeconomic quantitative description of logistics costs. The paper theoretically and empirically highlights that landlocked economies are primarily affected not only by a high cost of freight services but also by the high degree of unpredictability in transportation time. The main sources of costs are not only physical constraints but widespread rent activities and severe flaws in the implementation of the transit systems, which prevent the emergence of reliable logistics services. The business and donor community should push toward implementation of comprehensive facilitation strategies, primarily at the national level, and the design of robust and resilient transport and transit regimes. A better understanding of the political economy of transit and a review of the implementation successes and failures in this area are needed. -
Publication
Behavioral Economics and Public Sector Reform : An Accidental Experiment and Lessons from Cameroon
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-09)Starting with the hypothesis that behaviors are the critical (and often overlooked) factor in public sector performance, this paper explores the notion of how behavioral change (and thus institutional change) might be better motivated in the public sector. The basis for this study is "an accidental experiment" resulting from the World Bank's operational engagement in Cameroon. In 2008, World Bank staff successfully concluded preparation on a project to support the Government of Cameroon to improve transparency, efficiency, and accountability of public finance management. The US$15 million project supported a number of ministries to strengthen a broad range of management systems and capacities. Independently and concurrently, other Bank staff initiated a low-profile, technical assistance project to improve performance in Cameroon's Customs, supported by a small trade facilitation grant of approximately US$300,000. One approach appears to have succeeded in initiating change while the other has signally failed. The two projects of different scale, scope and design in the same governance environment offer a very interesting natural experiment (unplanned but accidental for that reason) that allows insights into the nature of institutional change and the role of behavior and incentives and approaches that offer greater prospects for making reform possible. The paper confirms the value of using ideas from behavioral economics, both to design institutional reforms and to critically assess the approach to institutional reform taken by development agencies such as the World Bank. -
Publication
Does the Semi-Autonomous Agency Model Function in a Low-Governance Environment? The Case of the Road Development Agency in Zambia
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-08)This paper uses Zambia as a case study to assess empirically whether political interference in a low-governance environment has diminished in the past years as expected after a semi-autonomous agency model was set up ten years ago. The road sector in Zambia has experienced some significant developments since then. The paper uses data on contract from 2008 to 2011 and analyses a number of key trends related to Road Development Agency governance and staffing dynamics as well as procurement and project selection within the institution. The main findings indicate that, after some years of implementation of these reforms, there is reason to question whether the model of semi-autonomous agency enables road management to be shielded from political interference. Zambia may be an isolated case but, so far, this model does not seem to have been able to decrease political interference in the selection or supervision of projects and there seems to have been an increased lack of accountability of civil servants working in this sector. -
Publication
Port and Maritime Transport Challenges in West and Central Africa
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-05)This Working Paper presents the current trends in maritime transport and port sectors in West and Central Africa (WCA), and proposes several policy recommendations to improve maritime transport and port efficiency in order to enhance economic growth. West and Central African economies, which depend on maritime transport for an overwhelming proportion of their trade, rely on efficient maritime transport and port sectors to be competitive on world markets. This paper was prepared for the Sub-Saharan Africa Transport Policy Program (SSATP), in the overall context of the World Bank's efforts for trade facilitation in Sub- Saharan Africa2 as a follow-up to the 1997 Second Cotonou meeting of West and Central Africa (WCA) Ministers. -
Publication
Customs, Brokers, and Informal Sectors : A Cameroon Case Study
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-02)Based on extensive interviews with informal importers and brokers in Cameroon, this paper explains why customs reform aimed at reducing fraud and corruption may be difficult to achieve. Informal traders and brokers (without licenses) follow various business models and practices, which are product-specific. Overall, what matters first are customs brokers' practices. Information asymmetries mark transactions between brokers and importers and are accompanied by misperceptions of the costs and risks of informal brokers working among informal importers. In a low-governance environment with widespread informal practices, blanket policies should be avoided in order to discourage activities of unprofessional and systematic bribe-taker brokers. It is also essential that customs officials disrupt information asymmetries and better disseminate information to informal importers on customs processes and official costs. Finally, customs should more strongly sanction some informal brokers in order to reduce collusion with some customs officers. -
Publication
Estimating Informal Trade across Tunisia's Land Borders
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-12)This paper uses mirror statistics and research in the field to estimate the magnitude of Tunisia's informal trade with Libya and Algeria. The aim is to assess the scale of this trade and to evaluate the amount lost in taxes and duties as a result as well as to assess the local impact in terms of income generation. The main findings show that within Tunisian trade as a whole, informal trade accounts for only a small share (5 percent of total imports). However, informal trade represents an important part of the Tunisia's bilateral trade with Libya and Algeria, accounting for more than half the official trade with Libya and more than total official trade with Algeria. The main reasons behind this large-scale informal trade are differences in the levels of subsidies on either side of the border as well as the varying tax regimes. Tackling informal trade is not simply a question of stepping up the number of controls and sanctions, because differences in prices lead to informal trade (and to an increase in corruption levels among border officials) even in cases where the sanctions are severe. As local populations depend on cross-border trade for income generation, they worry about local authorities taking action against cross-border trade. At the same time, customs officials are concerned about the risk of local protests if they strictly enforce the tariff regimes in place. This issue will become even more significant if fuel prices in Tunisia rise again as a result of a reduction in the levels of domestic subsidies. -
Publication
The Impact of Demand on Cargo Dwell Time in Ports in SSA
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-03)Long cargo dwell times in ports are a critical issue in Sub-Saharan African countries since they result in slow import processes and are bound to dramatically reduce trade. The main objective of this study is to analyze long dwell times' causes in ports in Sub-Saharan Africa from a shipper's perspective. The findings point to the crucial importance of private sector practices and incentives. The authors argue in the case of Sub-Saharan African countries that private operators, rather than being advocates of reforms in this area, might be responsible for the failures of many of these initiatives. It seems that in Sub-Saharan Africa importers' and freight forwarders' professionalism, cash constraints and operators' strategies are some of the factors that have a major impact on cargo dwell time. Low competency, cash constraints and low storage tariffs explain why most importers have little incentive to reduce cargo dwell time since in most cases, this would increase their input costs. However, monopolists/cartels may have a stronger incentive to reduce cargo dwell time but only in order to maximize their profit (and would not adjust prices downward). -
Publication
The Impact of Roads on Poverty Reduction : A Case Study of Cameroon
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2010-02)Many investments in infrastructure are built on the belief that they will ineluctably lead to poverty reduction and income generation. This has entailed massive aid-financed projects in roads in developing countries. However, the lack of robust evaluations and a comprehensive theoretical framework could raise questions about current strategies in Sub-Saharan Africa. Using the second Cameroonian national household survey (Enquete Camerounaise Aupres des Menages II, 2001) and the Cameroon case study, this paper demonstrates that investing uniformly in tarred roads in Africa is likely to have a much lower impact on poverty than expected. Isolation from a tarred road is found to have no direct impact on consumption expenditures in Cameroon. The only impact is an indirect one in the access to labor activities. This paper reasserts the fact that access to roads is only one factor contributing to poverty reduction (and not necessarily the most important in many cases). Considering that increase in non-farming activities is the main driver for poverty reduction in rural Africa, the results contribute to the idea that emphasis on road investments should be given to locations where non-farming activities could be developed, which does mean that the last mile in rural areas probably should not be a road. -
Publication
Are Rural Road Investments Alone Sufficient to Generate Transport Flows? Lessons from a Randomized Experiment in Rural Malawi and Policy Implications
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2011-01)This paper draws lessons from an original randomized experiment in Malawi. In order to understand why roads in relatively good condition in rural areas may not be used by buses, a minibus service was subsidized over a six-month period over a distance of 20 kilometers to serve five villages. Using randomly allocated prices for use of the bus, this experiment demonstrates that at very low prices, bus usage is high. Bus usage decreases rapidly with increased prices. However, based on the results on take-up and minibus provider surveys, the experiment demonstrates that at any price, low (with high usage) or high (with low usage), a bus service provider never breaks even on this road. This can contribute to explain why walking or cycling is so widespread on most rural roads in Sub-Saharan Africa. In terms of policy implications, this experiment explains that motorized services need to be subsidized; otherwise a road in good condition will most probably not lead to provision of service at an affordable price for the local population. -
Publication
Zambia : Rebuilding a Broken Public Investment Management System
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014)The report follows the diagnostic methodology as outlined in Rajaram et al. The diagnostics is based on interviews, a survey questionnaire with government officials, central statistical office (CSOs), and private sector and desk review of related documents. The paper identifies the weaknesses in processes and institutions that contribute to poor outcomes of public spending. The government has been conducting a number of reforms in this field, such as overarching public financial management and procurement reforms. However, the public investment management (PIM) remains largely inefficient and certain key functions of project evaluation are missing or in rudimentary forms. To succeed, all the pieces of reforms have to be woven into a coherent framework targeting the weakest links in the PIM system. Multiple factors, including the absence of necessary institutions, unclear institutional mandates, weak capacity, lack of vertical and horizontal coordination, and misaligned incentives drive the inefficiency of PIM. This also implies that pure technical solutions do not guarantee success. As a result this paper suggests that strengthening of the challenge function of the ministry of finance in Zambia is critical for better PIM but a gradual, incentive compatible approach is probably necessary in the current context.