Person:
Rentschler, Jun

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Economics of Development, Environment, and Climate
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Last updated: November 16, 2023
Biography
Jun Rentschler is a Senior Economist at the Office of the Chief Economist for Sustainable Development, working at the intersection of climate change and sustainable resilient development. Prior to joining The World Bank in 2012, he served as an Economic Adviser at the German Foreign Ministry. He also spent two years at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) working on private sector investment projects in resource efficiency and climate change. Before that he worked on projects with Grameen Microfinance Bank in Bangladesh and the Partners for Financial Stability Program by USAID in Poland. He is a Visiting Fellow at the Payne Institute for Public Policy, following previous affiliations with the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies and the Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo. Jun holds a PhD in Economics from University College London (UCL), specializing in development, climate, and energy.
Citations 78 Scopus

Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
  • Publication
    Underutilized Potential: The Business Costs of Unreliable Infrastructure in Developing Countries
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-06) Kornejew, Martin; Rentschler, Jun; Braese, Johannes; Hallegatte, Stephane; Obolensky, Marguerite
    This study constructs a microdata set of about 143,000 firms to estimate the monetary costs of infrastructure disruptions in 137 low- and middle-income countries, representing 78 percent of the world population and 80 percent of the GDP of low- and -middle-income countries. Specifically, this study assesses the impact of transport, electricity, and water disruptions on the capacity utilization rates of firms. The estimates suggest that utilization losses amount to $151 billion a year -- of which $107 billion are due to transport disruptions, $38 billion due to blackouts, and $6 billion due to dryouts. Moreover, this study shows that electricity outages are causing sales losses equivalent to $82 billion a year. Firms are also incurring the costs of self-generated electricity, estimated to amount to $64 billion a year (including annualized capital expenditure). At almost $300 billion a year, these figures highlight the substantial drag that unreliable infrastructure imposes on firms in developing countries. Yet, these figures are likely to be under-estimates as neither all countries nor all types of impacts are covered.
  • Publication
    Three Feet Under: The Impact of Floods on Urban Jobs, Connectivity, and Infrastructure
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-06) Braese, Johannes; Rentschler, Jun; Jones, Nick; Avner, Paolo; Avner, Paolo
    This paper analyses the degree to which infrastructure reliability and urban economic activity in several African cities is impacted by flooding. It combines firm-level micro data, flood maps, and several spatial data layers across cities through a harmonized geospatial network analysis. The analysis shows that a significant share of jobs in cities is directly affected by floods. It further details how transport infrastructure is subjected to significant flood risk that disproportionally affects main roads in many cities. While direct flood effects are revealed to be significant, this work further shows how knock-on implications for the entire urban economy might be even larger. Regardless of the direct flood exposure of firms, flooded transport networks mean that disruptions propagate across the city and drastically reduce the connectivity between firms. Access to hospitals is also found to be reduced significantly -- even during relatively light flooding events: From a third of locations in Kampala, floods mean that people would no longer be able to reach hospitals within the "golden hour" -- a rule of thumb referring to the window of time that maximizes the likelihood of survival after a severe medical incident. Overall, this study showcases the use of high-detail city-level analyses to better understand the localized impacts of natural hazards on urban infrastructure networks.
  • Publication
    Resilient Infrastructure for Thriving Firms: A Review of The Evidence
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-06) Braese, Johannes; Rentschler, Jun; Hallegatte, Stephane
    This review examines the literature on the role of infrastructure in determining the productivity and competitiveness of firms. It shows that the existing evidence base is clear in concluding that reliable and high-quality infrastructure is a crucial foundation for enabling businesses to thrive. It demonstrates that the provision of electricity, transport, water, and telecommunications systems increases firm-level productivity. It also shows that providing infrastructure per se is not enough to boost productivity, unless it offers reliable service. Disruptions and irregular service have substantial adverse effects on firms, not least due to disrupted supply chains, underutilization of production capacity, and costly adaptation measures.
  • Publication
    Coastal Development between Opportunity and Disaster Risk: A Multisectoral Risk Assessment for Vietnam
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-08) Braese, Johannes; De Vries Robbe, Sophie Anne; Rentschler, Jun
    This paper presents a multisectoral risk assessment, analyzing natural risks faced by key drivers of socioeconomic development in coastal Vietnam. The analysis quantifies the exposure of assets and economic activity to the following natural hazards: riverine flooding, coastal flooding, typhoon winds, coastal erosion, and saline intrusion. These hazards are analyzed according to their impact on agricultural production, aquaculture, human settlements, industrial zones, tourism, health care facilities, schools, and the electricity transmission network. Overall, the results show the complex nature of natural risk in Vietnam, with significant exposure of key economic sectors, public services and assets. The estimates suggest that exposure varies greatly between hazards, sectors, and provinces. This paper provides detailed technical descriptions of the methodologies, data sources, and analytical assumptions employed to obtain the estimates, and acts as a technical background paper to Resilient Shores: Vietnam's Coastal Development between Opportunity and Disaster Risk (Rentschler et al., 2020).