Rodriguez Castelan, Carlos

Person:
Rodriguez Castelan, Carlos

Poverty and Equity Global Practice

Author Name Variants

Rodriguez-Castelán, Carlos, Rodriguez Castelan, Carlos, Rodriguez-Castelan, Carlos, Rodríguez-Castelan, Carlos, Rodríguez-Castelán, Carlos

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

External Links

RePEc

Departments

Poverty and Equity Global Practice

Last updated:March 28, 2024

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.

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Publication Search Results

Now showing1 - 10 of 45

Mobile Broadband, Poverty, and Labor Outcomes in Tanzania
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2023-02-06) Bahia, Kalvin; Castells, Pau; Cruz, Genaro; Masaki, Takaaki; Sanfelice, Viviane; Rodriguez Castelan, Carlos
What are the impacts of expanding mobile broadband coverage on poverty, household consumption, and labor-market outcomes in developing countries Who benefits from improved coverage of mobile internet To respond to these questions, this paper applies a difference-in-differences estimation using panel household survey data combined with geospatial information on the rollout of mobile broadband coverage in Tanzania. The results reveal that being covered by 3G networks has a large positive effect on total household consumption and poverty reduction, driven by positive impacts on labor-market outcomes. Working-age individuals living in areas covered by mobile internet witnessed an increase in labor-force participation, wage employment, and non-farm self-employment, and a decline in farm employment. These effects vary by age, gender, and skill level. Younger and more skilled men benefit the most through higher labor-force participation and wage employment, while high-skilled women benefit from transitions from self-employed farm work into non-farm employment.
Global Job Quality: Evidence from Wage Employment across Developing Countries
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-08) Hovhannisyan, Shoghik; Montalva-Talledo, Veronica; Remick, Tyler; Rodríguez-Castelán, Carlos; Stamm, Kersten
Measuring job quality across countries has been challenging and has relied typically on a single indicator, such as formality or wages. To contribute to this critical policy issue, this paper presents a first global estimate of job quality departing from microdata. It assembles a harmonized global data set of labor force and household surveys to produce a measure of job quality across four dimensions: sufficient income, access to employment benefits, job stability, and adequate working conditions. The results for 40 developing countries show significant variation in job quality across countries, economic sectors, and sociodemographic characteristics, including age, location, and educational attainment. Countries in the Latin America and the Caribbean region have relatively higher levels of job quality, while countries in Sub-Saharan Africa display the lowest levels of job quality. Most workers in the sectors of finance and business services, public administration, and utilities have, on average, better jobs. Higher education matters in securing greater job quality, while the average job quality of wage employment is relatively similar between men and women but with some variation in income and working conditions.
Digital Senegal for Inclusive Growth: Technological Transformation for Better and More Jobs
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-02-03) Cruz, Marcio; Dutz, Mark A.; Rodríguez-Castelán, Carlos
Digital Senegal for Inclusive Growth explores possible solutions for a more intensive use of digital technologies, especially by small and medium enterprises, to increase their productivity and create more quality jobs. The report will contribute to helping women and young people in particular to gain access to decent work and therefore reduce their exposure to poverty. Appropriate use of this report will make it possible to succeed in the challenges of digital transformation, especially in the context of a relatively young population that is more open to innovation and change.
Lake Chad Regional Economic Memorandum: Development for Peace
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-11-09) Granguillhome, Rogelio; Hernandez, Marco; Lach, Samantha; Masaki, Takaaki; Rodríguez-Castelán, Carlos
This report sheds light on the interlocked long-term territorial development challenges and the recently realized systemic risks affecting the Lake Chad region. It summarizes the findings of seven technical papers, each investigating different aspects of the interlinked challenges faced by the region. These studies are accompanied by complementary research on labor market and geospatial socioeconomic trends, as well as by a review of the thin literature on economic development across the region. In addition to presenting the main results of the technical papers, the report positions the findings in the broader context of an analytical framework depicting the feedback mechanisms between the region’s territorial development gaps and the self-reinforcing link to shocks, namely, violent conflict and climate change. This analytical framework is presented in Section 1.2. The rest of the report is structured as follows. Section 1.3 describes the main social and economic trajectories in the region. It reviews long-term demographic trends, suggesting. Section 1.4 argues that the low-growth, high-poverty equilibrium observed in the region is closely linked to the region’s economic geography. Section 1.5 discusses how the impact of climatic variation and violent conflict experienced in the region interlink with and exacerbate the territorial development challenges. Section 1.6 presents policy directions structured around four crosscutting themes: infrastructure, trade, governance, and natural resource management. The crosscutting nature of these themes encourages the exploration of potential synergies across challenge areas. The discussion in the section aims to inform policy-making efforts to strengthen territorial development and mitigate the impacts of conflict and climate change. Such endeavors can increase the likelihood of breaking free from the self-reinforcing negative mechanisms and boost the potential return of the region to a path of stability and inclusive economic development.
Mobile Internet Adoption in West Africa
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-03) Granguillhome Ochoa, Rogelio; Rodriguez-Castelan, Carlos; Lach, Samantha; Masaki, Takaaki
Mobile broadband internet is the main technology through which individuals access the internet in developing countries. Understanding the barriers to broadband adoption is thus a priority in designing policies aiming to expand access and close the digital divide across socioeconomic groups and territories. This paper exploits data from harmonized household expenditure surveys in seven countries in West Africa in 2018/19—a subregion with one of the lowest levels of mobile internet penetration in the world—to identify the main factors that limit mobile broadband internet adoption. Results show that low levels of household consumption and prices of services are two key constraints. One standard deviation increase in household expenditure, about US$65 per capita per month, is associated with a 6.5 percentage point rise in the probability of adoption, while one standard deviation drop in the price of mobile internet services, about US$3.60, increases the probability of adoption by 2.4 percentage points. Other determinants include demographic characteristics (sex, age, language, urban location), socioeconomic features (educational attainment, sector of employment), and other factors linked to policy (access to electricity, ownership of assets, alternative means of internet access). Results are robust to specifications focusing only in areas with mobile internet coverage (3G).
Labor Informality and Market Segmentation in Senegal
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-07) Vazquez, Emmanuel; Rodríguez-Castelán, Carlos
Understanding the selection of workers into informality is a policy priority to design programs to increase formalization across Sub-Saharan Africa, where nine out of ten workers are informal. This paper estimates a model of self-selection with entry barriers into the formal sector to identify the extent of involuntary informality in Senegal, a representative country in terms of levels of informality in West Africa and with one of the most rigid labor markets in the world. The results show that the desire of being formal is greater for workers with formal education, married, and a lower proportion of children younger than age five living in the household. The individual's preference for the formal sector also grows with age at a decreasing rate. The results also show that labor informality is mainly a voluntary phenomenon, with 30 percent of informal workers being involuntarily displaced into the informal sector. The results are robust to different model specifications, definitions of labor informality, and heterogeneous groups of workers.
Lake Chad Regional Economic Memorandum: Technical Paper 1. Socioeconomic Trends in the Lake Chad Region
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-11-09) Masaki, Takaaki; Rodríguez-Castelán, Carlos
The Lake Chad region, which is an economically-and socially integrated area spanning across four countries of Chad, Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria in north-west Africa, has been trapped in a vicious circle of suboptimal territorial development and fragility. This note shows that the Lake Chad region lags in multiple dimensions of development ranging from poverty, human capital, and access to services. A poverty rate in the Lake Chad region is found to be much higher than other parts of the countries surrounding the lake. The regional poverty rate in the Extreme North region of Cameroon (59 percent) is three times higher that of the rest of the country (19 percent). In Nigeria, the Lake Chad region203 has a poverty rate (72 percent) nearly twice as high as in the rest of the country (38 percent). Chad is the only exception, where the poverty rate in the country’s Lake Chad region (31 percent) is lower than the rest of the country (40 percent).204 This is explained by the fact that the Chad region around the lake lies near the capital of the country, with a consequently higher urbanization rate and a relatively high population density. The note is organized as follows. Section 2.2 provides key statistics on poverty, sector of work, and human capital indicators in the Lake Chad region vis-à-vis other parts of the country and examine how the Lake Chad lags behind in different dimensions. Section 2.3 provides a diagnostic of economic geography with a focus on three dimensions of density, distance and division. Section 2.4 identifies a set of structural factors, aggregate shocks and selected policies that might be associated with the dynamics of economic activity and social inclusion across the region.
Mobile Broadband Internet, Poverty and Labor Outcomes in Tanzania
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-08) Bahia, Kalvin; Castells, Pau; Cruz, Genaro; Masaki, Takaaki; Rodriguez-Castelan, Carlos; Sanfelice, Viviane
What are the impacts of expanding mobile broadband coverage on poverty, household consumption and labor market outcomes in developing countries? Who benefits from improved coverage of mobile internet? To respond to these questions, this paper applies a difference-in-differences estimation using panel household survey data combined with geospatial information on the rollout of mobile broadband coverage in Tanzania. The results reveal that being covered by 3G networks has a large positive effect on total household consumption and poverty reduction, driven by positive impacts on labor market outcomes. Working age individuals living in areas covered by mobile internet witnessed an increase in labor force participation, wage employment, and non-farm self-employment, and a decline in farm employment. These effects vary by age, gender and skill level. Younger and more skilled men benefit the most through higher labor force participation and wage employment, while high-skilled women benefit from transitions from self-employed farm work into non-farm employment.
Lake Chad Regional Economic Memorandum: Technical Paper 2. Climate Change, Rural Livelihoods, and Urbanization - Evidence from the Permanent Shrinking of Lake Chad
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-11-09) Jedwab, Remi; Haslop, Federico; Masaki, Takaaki; Rodríguez-Castelán, Carlos
There is a vast economic literature studying the effects of climate change on long-run growth, migration, urbanization, and human capital, among several other outcomes. The paper is structured as follows: Section 3.2 dives into some of the physical characteristics of Lake Chad and its water sources. Section 3.3 introduces our novel data. Section 3.4 presents the hypothesis and empirical strategy behind our analysis. Sections 3.5, 3.6 and 3.7 present results on total population, cities and roads, respectively. Finally, section 3.8 concludes.
Determinants and Welfare Impacts of Mobile Internet Adoption in African Countries
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022) Pierola, Denisse; Rodríguez-Castelán, Carlos
Digital technologies (DTs) are becoming an important mechanism for unleashing inclusive development, particularly across Africa. The rollout of mobile broadband internet (3G) coverage has expanded substantially in several African countries; however, digital divides persist across various groups. The issue of affordability - the combination of low household consumption and the high prices of services - is a main constraint on internet adoption across Africa. Evidence in case studies on Nigeria and Tanzania reveals that greater 3G coverage is associated significantly with higher household consumption, lower poverty rates, and positive labor market outcomes. Policies focusing on reducing household budget constraints, the price of mobile data, and increasing competition in service provision are critical to supporting the expansion of internet access.