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Raiser, Martin

East Asia and Pacific
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Macroeconomics, Public Sector Management, Private Sector Development
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Last updated: January 31, 2023
Biography
Martin Raiser is the World Bank’s new Country Director for China and Mongolia, and Director for Korea starting March 1, 2019. Mr. Raiser is leading a team that is managing one of the World Bank’s largest loan portfolios and directs an extensive analytical and advisory program with China and Mongolia, and a growing knowledge partnership with Korea. Mr. Raiser holds a doctorate degree in Economics (summa cum laude) from the University of Kiel, Germany, and degrees in Economics and Economic History from the London School of Economics and Political Sciences. Mr. Raiser worked for the Kiel Institute of World Economics and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, where he was Director of Country Strategy and Editor of the Transition Report. Since joining the World Bank in 2003, Mr. Raiser held positions as the Country Manager in Uzbekistan, Country Director for Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova, Country Director for Turkey, and most recently Country Director for Brazil. Mr. Raiser, a German national, is married and has four children. He speaks German, English, French and Portuguese fluently; has good knowledge of Russian; and elementary knowledge of Spanish. Mr. Raiser has published numerous articles in refereed economic journals and authored several books.

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Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Golden Growth : Restoring the Lustre of the European Economic Model
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2012-04-18) Raiser, Martin; Gill, Indermit S.
    Europe's growth will have to be golden in yet another sense. Economic prosperity has brought to Europeans the gift of longer lives, and the continent's population has aged a lot over the last five decades. Over the next five, it will age even more by 2060; almost a third of Europeans will be older than 65 years. Europe will have to rebuild its structures to make fuller use of the energies and experience of its more mature population's people in their golden years. These desires and developments already make the European growth model distinct. Keeping to the discipline of the golden rule would make it distinguished. This report shows how Europeans have organized the six principal economic activities trade, finance, enterprise, innovation, labor, and government in unique ways. But policies in parts of Europe do not recognize the imperatives of demographic maturity and clash with growth's golden rule. Conforming growth across the continent to Europe's ideals and the iron laws of economics will require difficult decisions. This report was written to inform them. Its findings the changes needed to make trade and finance will not be as hard as those to improve enterprise and innovation; these in turn are not as arduous and urgent as the changes needed to restructure labor and government. Its message the remedies are not out of reach for a part of the world that has proven itself both intrepid and inclusive.
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    Back to Planning: How to Close Brazil's Infrastructure Gap in Times of Austerity
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-07-12) Clarke, Roland; Raiser, Martin; Procee, Paul; Briceno-Garmendia, Cecilia; Kikoni, Edith; Kizito, Joseph; Vinuela, Lorena
    Why does Brazil continue to lag its peers in the quality of physical infrastructure? What are the implications for growth prospects? What could be done to close the infrastructure gap? These are the key questions addressed in this new report on infrastructure in Brazil. The key argument of the report is that Brazil needs to improve its capacity to plan and prioritize its infrastructure investments. Poorly prioritized and prepared infrastructure investments are a key reason why successive government programs, often with significant budget allocations, have had limited impact. Insufficient planning efforts have meant that what investment takes place has done little to reduce glaring inefficiencies and losses. With more efforts upstream to prepare a robust pipeline of projects, Brazil is in an excellent position to attract commercial financing to its infrastructure. With more attention to sector planning and governance, losses could be reduced and the effective resources available to infrastructure could be roughly doubled. This in turn would help boost growth and improve the quality of public services without the need for much additional public money. The report analyzes recent government measures such as the creation of the PPI and develops recommendations how infrastructure can become an engine of economic recovery in Brazil.
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    Economic Cooperation in the Wider Central Asia Region
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2006) Byrd, William; Raiser, Martin; Dobronogov, Anton; Kitain, Alexander
    This paper lays out the big issues that affect regional cooperation and development in the wider Central Asia region, and analyzes in greater detail areas where there appear to be good prospects for progress in the short run. The paper develops a framework for approaching regional cooperation in the wider Central Asia region, based on identifying and analyzing critical linkages among sectors, and explicitly recognizing political obstacles and the corresponding need for political incentives to make progress. Modest, "win-win" initiatives will help build trust and momentum for tackling the more difficult areas, but there may also be opportunities for "bold strokes" to augment, and change the distribution of benefits sufficiently to leverage more substantial progress. The paper notes that progress in regional cooperation has been limited to date, largely on account of political obstacles related to geopolitical rivalries but also due to an inability to agree over the distribution of the potential benefits from cooperation between, and within countries. It then provides a thematic overview of critical clusters of issues including the nexus of: a) border security issues with narcotics, trade facilitation, and people movements; b) transport infrastructure and trade, and transport facilitation; c) irrigation water issues with narcotics, and people movements; and, d) electricity (hydropower), and water issues. Practical short-run recommendations are put forward that take political incentives into consideration.
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    Trust in Transition: Cross-Country and Firm Evidence
    (2008) Raiser, Martin; Steves, Franklin; Teksoz, Utku
    Using data from a large survey of firms across 26 transition economies, this article assesses the extent of trust in business relationships by measuring the level of prepayment demanded by suppliers, which we interpret as a measure of (dis)trust. We investigate a range of potential determinants of trust and find that trust among businesses is higher where confidence in third party enforcement through the legal system is higher. We also find that different types of business networks have a differential impact on the degree of trust between enterprises: networks based around family and friends help to build trust among firms, whereas networks based around enterprise insiders and government agencies appear to undermine trust. Our conclusion, based on the use of a unique multicountry enterprise data set, is that enterprises' room for maneuver in overcoming opportunism and distrust is much more limited by countrywide systemic factors than previously believed.
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    Beyond Borders--Reconsidering Regional Trade in Central Asia
    (2008) Grafe, Clemens; Raiser, Martin; Sakatsume, Toshiaki
    This paper investigates the barriers to trade in Central Asia. While much of the existing literature on international integration of FSU countries has focused on the quantities traded, we use relative prices to shed some light on impediments to trade. We find that the impact of borders on price variations across different locations in Central Asia is much smaller than conventionally thought. While prices vary significantly across the region, variations within one country are just as large as variations across countries. We hypothesise (although we cannot prove) that this is due to obstacles to trade, and in particular rent seeking by enforcement agencies at the numerous internal check points. The paper also confirms that in relative terms, the borders with Uzbekistan are considerably more difficult to cross than those with Kazakhstan or the Kyrgyz Republic.