Person:
Rodriguez Castelan, Carlos
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Inequality and shared prosperity,
Jobs and poverty,
Poverty measurement and analysis,
Economic analysis of education,
Fiscal policy and inequality,
Impact of competition
Degrees
External Links
Departments
Poverty and Equity Global Practice
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
January 31, 2023
Biography
Carlos Rodríguez-Castelán is a Lead Economist and a Global Lead of the Data for Policy Global Solutions Group in the Poverty and Equity Global Practice of the World Bank. He is also a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). He currently leads projects in areas related to equity and efficiency effects of economic reforms and private sector investments, impacts of digital technologies on inclusive growth in Sub-Saharan countries, and closing data gaps in IDA countries. Previously he was a Senior Economist in the Latin America and the Caribbean Region, and a Global Lead of the Markets and Institutions Global Solutions Group, where he led various operations and analytical programs on inclusive growth in Colombia, Chile, Mexico, and Uruguay. Prior to joining the World Bank in 2011, Carlos was a postdoctoral fellow in the Foreign Policy and Global Economy and Development programs of the Brookings Institution. Before that he worked for the Government of Mexico as economic adviser in the Ministry of Public Education. His main areas of interest are in public economics and development economics. His research focuses on growth, productivity and inequality analysis, efficiency and equity effects of market failures, labor market analysis, impact evaluation of fiscal and social policies, and social risk management. He has published several articles in peer reviewed academic journals, and he is the co-author of various Word Bank books and reports. He holds a bachelor's degree in Economics, a bachelor's degree in Political Science and a master's in Public Policy from Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM). He also holds a masters and a PhD in Economics from Cornell University.
Publication Search Results
1 - 10 of 44
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Publication
Living on the Edge : Vulnerability to Poverty and Public Transfers in Mexico
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-11-12)This paper reports that the vulnerable in Mexico—people who left poverty but have not yet gained a place in the middle class—make up 30-40 percent of the population, thanks to a combination of highly unsettled, low-paid employment, living in communities with poor services, and over-exposure to often short-lived and somewhat unpredictable uninsured risks. It seems necessary to distinguish between long-term and short-term sources of vulnerability to poverty, and from a policy perspective, keeping this distinction between quasi-permanent factors and shocks remains relevant as very different measures address each problem. Policy options may include (1) expanding coverage of existing programs to encompass the highly vulnerable in a permanent way or to build mechanisms into existing safety nets so that they can expand support when needed, or (2) pushing for a more radical redesign of existing programs to address simultaneously the differentiated causes (structural and transient) to the threat of future poverty. -
Publication
Crime and Growth Convergence : Evidence from Mexico
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-12)Scholars have often argued that crime deters growth, but the empirical literature assessing such effect is scarce. By exploiting cross-municipality income and crime data for Mexico -- a country that experienced a high increase in crime rates over the past decade -- this study circumvents two of the most common problems faced by researchers in this area. These are: (i) the lack of a homogenous, consistently comparable measure of crime and (ii) the small sample problem in the estimation. Combining income data from poverty maps, administrative records on crime and violence, and public expenditures data at the municipal level for Mexico (2005-2010), the analysis finds evidence indicating that drug-related crimes indeed deter growth. It also finds no evidence of a negative effect on growth from crimes unrelated to drug trafficking. -
Publication
Is Uruguay More Resilient This Time? Distributional Impacts of a Crisis Similar to the 2001/02 Argentine Crisis
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-04)The 2001/02 Argentine crisis had a profound impact on Uruguay's economy. Uruguay's gross domestic product shrank by 17.5 percent and the proportion of people living below the poverty line doubled in just two years. It took almost 10 years for the poverty rate to recover to its pre-crisis level. This paper uses a macro-micro simulation technique to simulate the impact of a similar crisis on the current Uruguayan economy. The simulation exercise suggests that Uruguay would now be in a better place to weather such a severe crisis. The impact on poverty would be considerably lower, inequality would not change significantly, and household incomes would be 8 percent lower than in the absence of a crisis (almost 9 percent lower for those households in the bottom 40 percent of the income distribution). Young individuals, female-headed households, those living in Montevideo, and those who do not have complete secondary education are more vulnerable to falling into poverty were the crisis to strike. -
Publication
The Welfare Effects of Mobile Broadband Internet: Evidence from Nigeria
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-05)This paper estimates the impacts of mobile broadband coverage on household consumption and poverty in Nigeria, the largest economy and mobile broadband market in Africa. The analysis exploits a unique dataset that integrates three waves of a nationally representative longitudinal household survey on living standards with information from Nigerian mobile operators on the deployment of mobile broadband (3G and 4G) coverage between 2010 and 2016. The estimates show that mobile broadband coverage had large and positive impacts on household consumption levels which increased over time, although at a decreasing rate. Mobile broadband coverage also reduces the proportion of households below the poverty line, driven by higher food and non-food consumption in rural households. These effects are mainly due to an increase in labor force participation and employment, particularly among women. -
Publication
Income Inequality and Violent Crime : Evidence from Mexico's Drug War
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-06)The relationship between income inequality and crime has attracted the interest of many researchers, but little convincing evidence exists on the causal effect of inequality on crime in developing countries. This paper estimates this effect in a unique context: Mexico's Drug War. The analysis takes advantage of a unique data set containing inequality and crime statistics for more than 2,000 Mexican municipalities covering a period of 20 years. Using an instrumental variable for inequality that tackles problems of reverse causality and omitted variable bias, this paper finds that an increment of one point in the Gini coefficient translates into an increase of more than 10 drug-related homicides per 100,000 inhabitants between 2006 and 2010. There are no significant effects before 2005. The fact that the effect was found during Mexico's Drug War and not before is likely because the cost of crime decreased with the proliferation of gangs (facilitating access to knowledge and logistics, lowering the marginal cost of criminal behavior), which, combined with rising inequality, increased the expected net benefit from criminal acts after 2005. -
Publication
Inequality in a Lower Growth Latin America : LAC Semiannual Report, October 2014
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2014-10-10)As usual in this series, Chapter 1 reviews the configuration of global risks and assesses the outstanding short term opportunities and challenges facing the LAC region. We document the significant slowdown in economic activity across the region, and explore the possibility of this being the ‘new normal’. In Chapter 2 we assess if the major social gains achieved during the ‘Golden Decade’, in particular the decline in inequality, will hold in this less supportive environment, and discuss alternative policy responses to preserve and further the equity gains in the region. -
Publication
Weather Shocks and Health at Birth in Colombia
(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2014-11)Poor health at birth has negative long-run effects on individual well-being and is also detrimental for intergenerational mobility. This paper examines whether health outcomes at birth are affected by in utero increased exposure to rainfall and temperature shocks in Colombia, one of the countries in the world with the highest incidence of extreme weather events per year. The paper uses a fixed effects design to gauge the causal effect using variation in fetal exposure to these shocks by municipality and date of birth. The analysis finds negative effects of temperature shocks on birth health outcomes and no effect of rainfall shocks. The results indicate that heat waves lead to a 0.5 percentage point reduction in the probability of being born at full term and a decline of 0.4 percentage point in the probability of newborns classified as healthy. The timing of exposure to the shock matters and it matters differently for different outcomes. These findings are critical to prioritize responses to counteract the negative effects of weather, particularly hot shocks, which are projected to become more frequent and intense with changing climate. -
Publication
Inequality Stagnation in Latin America in the Aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis
(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2014-12)Over the past decade (2003-12), Latin America has experienced strong income growth and a notable reduction in income inequality, with the region's Gini coefficient falling from 55.6 to 51.8. Previous studies have warned about the sustainability of such a decline, and this paper presents evidence of stagnation in the pace of reduction of income inequality in Latin America since 2010. This phenomenon of stagnation is robust to different measures of inequality and is largely attributable to the impact of the Global Financial Crisis on Mexico and Central America, where inequality rose after 2010 as labor income recovered. Moreover, this paper finds evidence that much of the continuation of inequality reduction after the crisis at the country level has been due to negative or zero income growth for households in the top of the income distribution, and lower growth of the incomes of the poorest households. The crisis also highlighted weaknesses in the region's labor markets and the heavy reliance on public transfers to redistribute, underscoring the vulnerability of the region's recent social gains to global economic conditions. -
Publication
Living on the Edge : Vulnerability to Poverty and Public Transfers in Mexico
(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2015-01)Social policy in Mexico has focused on identifying and supporting chronically poor households. Yet, Mexico has a significant number of households that are just above the poverty line who are not eligible, by definition, for antipoverty programs and are at risk of falling back into poverty in the event of an economic crisis or shocks like loss of employment and natural disasters. These shocks can have serious negative effects on welfare in the absence of social safety nets targeted to these households. This study uses household survey data to better understand these "vulnerable" households, including their profile and risk exposure and, more importantly, to document the extent to which these households are covered by public transfers and insurance mechanisms. The analysis shows that until 2010 most social programs, including the few with productive components, such as vocational training and productive investment grants, barely covered the vulnerable. The study concludes that public policies need to pay attention to the vulnerable households and find the right policy mix between targeted interventions and universal insurance schemes to serve this economic group. -
Publication
Shared Prosperity and Poverty Eradication in Latin America and the Caribbean
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2015-04)Over the last decade Latin America and the Caribbean region has achieved important progress towards the World Bank Group's goals of eradicating extreme poverty and boosting income growth of the bottom 40 percent, propelled by remarkable economic growth and falling income inequality. Despite this impressive performance, social progress has not been uniform over this period, and certain countries, subregions and even socioeconomic groups participated less in the growth process. As of today, more than 75 million people still live in extreme poverty in the region (using $2.50/day/capita), half of them in Brazil and Mexico, and extreme poverty rates top 40 percent in Guatemala and reach nearly 60 percent in Haiti. This means that extreme poverty is still an important issue in both low- and middle-income countries in the region. As growth wanes and progress in reducing the still high levels of inequality in the region slows, it will be more important than ever for governments to focus policies on inclusive growth. The book includes an overview that highlights progress towards the goals of poverty eradication and shared prosperity between 2003 and 2012, unpacks recent gains at the household level using an income-based asset model, and examines some of the policy levers used to affect social outcomes in the region. It draws on 13 country studies, eight of which are featured in this volume: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay. The other case studies include: Bolivia, Chile, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and Honduras, which will be included in the web version of the book.
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