Person:
Carneiro, Francisco G.

Caribbean Country Management Unit, World Bank, Latin America & Caribbean

Fields of Specialization

Macroeconomics

Departments

Caribbean Country Management Unit, World Bank
Latin America & Caribbean

Last updated January 31, 2023

Biography

Francisco Carneiro is the Lead Economist and Program Leader for the Caribbean at the World Bank. Since joining the World Bank in 2003, he has worked in multiple regions of the world. Before 2003, Mr. Carneiro was professor of Economics at the University of Brasilia and at the Catholic University of Brasilia, and served as Economic Adviser in the Ministry of External Relations in Brazil. He has authored and co-authored a number of academic papers and World Bank reports on a range of topics that include macroeconomics and growth, natural resource revenue management, trade, labor market institutions, poverty, and inequality. Born in Brazil, he received his PhD in Economics from the University of Kent in the United Kingdom in 1996.

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Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 18

What Promises Does the Eurasian Customs Union Hold for the Future?

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-02) Carneiro, Francisco G.

Established in 2010, the Eurasian Customs Union (ECU) carries significant economic weight as three of its member countries represent a potentially large consumer market. Drawing on existing literature that has studied the likely impacts of the ECU in Central Asia, this note discusses the ECU's pitfalls and potential benefits. After briefly describing the main features of the ECU, this note assesses whether the changes introduced after its establishment have benefitted all of its members equally, and concludes with a discussion of what will need to change to achieve the ECU's full potential. Available evidence suggests that the Russian Federation has been the main beneficiary in the short term, but that there are several benefits to be gained by other members in the medium to long term. Full realization of these benefits, however, will require political commitment and steadfast action to reduce nontariff barriers (NTBs), improve trade facilitation, and reduce the costs of trading across borders in the region.
Human Capital and Earnings Inequality in Brazil, 1988-98 : Quantile Regression Evidence

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2003-10) Arabsheibani, G. Reza ; Galrão Carneiro, Francisco ; Henley, Andrew

The authors undertake an empirical examination of rates of return to human capital for men in Brazil, through the period of macroeconomic stabilization and trade liberalization, using data from the 1988, 1992, and 1998 Brazilian household surveys (Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domic�os, PNAD). The authors estimate simultaneous quantile equations to gain an insight on the impact of human capital on wages across the hourly earnings distribution. They conclude that there is evidence of growing inequality in rates of return to education in Brazil. But the authors find evidence that education is no longer used as a screening device in the labor market, but rather rewarded for its innate association with higher productivity. Although increases in rates of return to education have been more pronounced at the top of the earnings distribution, this has not led to increased inequality. This is because the levels of education and other labor market-rewarded endowments have increased and offset the rate of return effect.
Gender Wage Differentials in Brazil : Trends over a Turbulent Era

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2003-10) Arabsheibani, G. Reza ; Galrão Carneiro, Francisco ; Henley, Andrew

Since the late 1980s, macroeconomic and trade reform in Brazil appears to have been accompanied by a substantial improvement in the position of women compared with men in the labor market, despite only modest changes to labor market institutions. The authors examine movements in the gender wage gap from 1988 to 1998. Their findings indicate that, over this period, the gender wage gap fell mainly because of reduced discrimination against women. But the authors find evidence to suggest that, more recently, since the elimination of high inflation, human capital investments and other earnings-related enhancements have begun to improve women's condition.
On Defining and Measuring the Informal Sector

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2006-03) Henley, Andrew ; Arabsheibani, G. Reza ; Carneiro, Francisco G.

A range of alternative empirical definitions of informal activity have been employed in the literature. Choice of definition is often dictated by data availability. Different definitions may imply very different conceptual understandings of informality. In this paper the authors investigate the degree of congruence between three definitions of informality based on employment contract registration, social security protection, and the characteristics of the employer and employment using Brazilian household survey data for the period 1992 to 2001. The authors present evidence showing that 64 percent of the economically active population are informal according to at least one definition, but only 40 percent are informal according to all three. Steady compositional changes have been taking place among informal workers, conditional on definition. The econometric analysis reveals that the conditional impact of particular factors (demographic, educational attainment, and family circumstances) on the likelihood of informality varies considerably from one definition to another. The results suggest growing heterogeneity within the informal sector. Therefore, the authors argue that informal activity may be as much associated with entrepreneurial dynamism as with any desire to avoid costly contract registration and social protection. However, the authors confirm there is no a priori reason for entrepreneurial activity to be unprotected. Consequently definitions of informality based on occupation and employer size seem the most arbitrary in practice even if conceptually well-founded.
Tajikistan : Reinvigorating Growth in Khatlon Oblast

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-06) Carneiro, Francisco ; Bakanova, Marina

This report supports a joint World Bank-IFC initiative to review and evaluate economic growth prospects for Khatlon oblast in order to develop a private sector-driven strategy for accelerating the region's growth over the medium term.
New Evidence on the Cyclicality of Fiscal Policy

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-06) Carneiro, Francisco G. ; Garrido, Leonardo

This paper presents new evidence on the patterns of cyclicality in the fiscal policy stance of developing and industrialized countries over a period of more than three decades covering 180 countries during 1980–2012. First, the paper considers issues of robustness in the choice of the proxy for fiscal cyclicality by using alternative filtering methods to check whether this influences the results and leads to any differences in a country’s reported within-period average, and across-period changes in fiscal stance. Second, a country-specific approach is used to split the sample into sub-periods based on a test for structural break in the series of real gross domestic product per capita. Third, the paper investigates the extent to which countries behave pro-cyclically or counter-cyclically in different phases of the business cycle. In line with earlier findings in the literature, the analysis confirms that there is a causal link running from stronger institutions to less pro-cyclical fiscal policy, even after controlling for the endogeneity of institutions and other determinants of fiscal policy.
Changing for the Better: The Path to Upper-Middle-Income Status in Uzbekistan

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-06) Trushin, Eskender ; Carneiro, Francisco G.

As a low-middle-income country with a gross domestic product (GDP) per capita of US$1,715 and a population of 30 million (nearly half of all of the Central Asian population), Uzbekistan has seen stable economic progress since the mid-2000s, both in terms of growth and poverty reduction. Growth has averaged 8 percent per year since 2004 and extreme poverty has declined from 27 percent in 2000 to 15 percent in 2012. Encouraged by this outstanding growth performance, the Uzbek authorities have set an ambitious goal for the country, to join the group of upper-middle-income countries by 2030. This note discusses the main challenges that the government is likely to face and the structural transformations that the economy will have to undergo to achieve this objective.
The Effects of Volatility, Fiscal Policy Cyclicality and Financial Development on Growth: Evidence for the Eastern Caribbean

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-12) Brüeckner, Markus ; Carneiro, Francisco

This paper presents estimates of the effects that terms of trade volatility has on growth of real gross domestic product per capita. Based on five-year non-overlapping panel data comprising 175 countries during 1980–2010, the paper finds that: (i) in model specifications that do not include country fixed effects, terms of trade volatility has a significant negative average effect on economic growth; (ii) once country fixed effects are included in the model, the average effect of terms of trade volatility on economic growth is not significantly different from zero; (iii) robust to the inclusion of country fixed effects, terms of trade volatility has significantly adverse effects on economic growth in countries with pro-cyclical fiscal policy; and (iv) in model specifications that do not include country fixed effects, financial development is a significant mediating factor with regard to the effect that terms of trade volatility has on economic growth, however, the significance of this effect vanishes once country fixed effects are included in the model. The paper also explores these relationships for the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States region. A key conclusion from the research is that countercyclical fiscal policy and deeper financial markets will have particularly high payoffs in reducing the adverse growth effects of terms of trade volatility in the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States region.
Business Cycles in the Eastern Caribbean Economies: The Role of Fiscal Policy and Interest Rates

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-01) Carneiro, Francisco ; Hnatkovska, Viktoria

This paper analyzes the business cycle characteristics of the economies of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States using a model of a small open economy subject to interest rate and fiscal expenditure shocks and financial frictions. The paper shows that macroeconomic aggregates in this region are quite volatile, with consumption exhibiting higher volatility than gross domestic product. The analysis also finds that in these economies real interest rates are highly volatile and strongly countercyclical with gross domestic product and other macroeconomic aggregates. Similarly, fiscal expenditures show significant volatility, but are pro-cyclical with gross domestic product. The results suggest two major directions for designing policies to help reduce the volatility experienced by the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States economies. First, Organization of Eastern Caribbean States countries should seek a greater openness to international financial markets, which could help them smooth out the effects of fundamental shocks, such as shocks to technology and terms of trade, and shocks associated with natural hazards. However, this removal of international financial barriers needs to be accompanied by improvements in domestic financial conditions, as this would reduce the vulnerability of these economies to country risk premium shocks. Second, the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States region should try harder to move toward a countercyclical fiscal policy stance, as this could help to stabilize the domestic risk premium and cushion the negative effects of interest rate shocks on economic activity, hence reducing volatility.
Inflation Targeting and Exchange Rate Volatility in Emerging Markets

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-06) Cabral, Rene ; Carneiro, Francisco G. ; Varella Mollick, Andre

The paper investigates the relevance of the exchange rate on the reaction function of the central banks of 24 emerging market economies for the period 2000Q1 to 2015Q2. This is done by first employing fixed-effects ordinary least squares and then system generalized method of the moments techniques. Under fixed effects, the exchange rate is found to be an important determinant in the reaction function of emerging market economies. Allowing for the endogeneity of inflation, output gap, and exchange rate, the exchange rate remains a positive and significant determinant, but less quantitatively relevant across inflation-targeting countries. When the sample is partitioned into targeting and nontargeting countries, the exchange rate remains relevant in the reaction function of the latter group. The results remain robust to splitting the sample at the time of the financial crisis of 2007–09 and suggest that, after the crisis, the central banks of emerging market economies responded only to inflation movements in the interest rate reaction function.