Person:
Premand, Patrick

Development Impact Evaluation Group, the World Bank
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Fields of Specialization
Social protection, Safety nets, Employment, Skills, Early childhood development, Impact evaluation, Development economics
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Development Impact Evaluation Group, the World Bank
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Last updated: June 28, 2024
Biography
Patrick Premand is a Senior Economist in the Development Impact Evaluation Group (DIME) in the research Vice-Presidency at the World Bank. He works on Social Protection and Safety Nets; Jobs, Economic Inclusion and Entrepreneurship; and Early Childhood Development. He conducts impact evaluations and policy experiments of social protection, jobs and human development programs. He often works on government-led interventions implemented at scale, in close collaboration with policymakers and researchers. He has led policy dialogue and technical assistance activities, as well as worked on the design, implementation and management of a range of World Bank operations. He previously held various positions at the World Bank, including in the Social Protection & Jobs group in Africa, the Human Development Economics Unit of the Africa region, the Office of the Chief Economist for Human Development, and the Poverty Unit of the Latin America and Caribbean region. He holds a DPhil in Economics from Oxford University.
Citations 134 Scopus

Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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Do Public Works Programs Have Sustained Impacts?: A Review of Experimental Studies from LMICs

2023-06-27, Bagga, Aanchal, Holmlund, Marcus, Khan, Nausheen, Mani, Subha, Mvukiyehe, Eric, Premand, Patrick

Many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have introduced public works programs that offer temporary cash-for-work opportunities to poor individuals. This paper reviews experimental evidence on the impacts of public works programs on participants over the short and medium run, providing new insights on whether they have sustained impacts. The findings show that public works mainly increase employment and earnings during the program. Short-term positive effects tend to fade in the medium run, except in a few cases in which large impacts on savings or investments in self-employment activities are also observed. Importantly, the estimated impacts on earnings are much lower than planned transfer amounts due to forgone earnings, raising questions about cost-effectiveness. There is also little evidence of public works programs improving food consumption expenditure. The review finds evidence of improvements in psychological well-being and women’s empowerment in some cases, but not systematically, and with limitations in measurement. The paper concludes by outlining directions for future research.

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Entrepreneurship Training and Self-Employment among University Graduates : Evidence from a Randomized Trial In Tunisia

2012-12, Premand, Patrick, Almeida, Rita, Barouni, Mahdi

In economies characterized by low labor demand and high rates of youth unemployment, entrepreneurship training has the potential to enable youth to gain skills and create their own jobs. This paper presents experimental evidence on a new entrepreneurship track that provides business training and personalized coaching to university students in Tunisia. Undergraduates in the final year of licence appliquee were given the opportunity to graduate with a business plan instead of following the standard curriculum. This paper relies on randomized assignment of the entrepreneurship track to identify impacts on labor market outcomes one year after graduation. The analysis finds that the entrepreneurship track was effective in increasing self-employment among applicants, but that the effects are small in absolute terms. In addition, the employment rate among participants remains unchanged, pointing to a partial substitution from wage employment to self-employment. The evidence shows that the program fostered business skills, expanded networks, and affected a range of behavioral skills. Participation in the entrepreneurship track also heightened graduates optimism toward the future shortly after the Tunisian revolution.

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Transfers, Diversification and Household Risk Strategies: Can productive safety nets help households manage climatic variability?

2022-03-30, Macours, Karen, Premand, Patrick, Vakis, Renos

Despite increasing climatic variability and frequent weather shocks in many developing countries, there is little evidence on effective policies that help poor agricultural households manage risk. This paper presents experimental evidence on a program in rural Nicaragua aimed at improving households’ risk-management through income diversification. The intervention targeted agricultural households exposed to weather shocks and combined a one-year conditional cash transfer with vocational training or a productive investment grant. We identify the relative impact of each complementary package based on randomized assignment and analyse how impacts vary by exposure to exogenous drought shocks. The results show that both complementary interventions provide protection against weather shocks two years after the programme ended. Households that received the productive investment grant also had higher average consumption levels. The complementary interventions facilitated income smoothing and diversification of economic activities, as such offering better protection from shocks compared to beneficiaries of the basic conditional cash transfer and control households. Relaxing capital constraints induced investments in non-agricultural businesses, while relaxing skills constraints increased wage work and migration in response to shocks. These results show that combining safety nets with productive interventions relaxing skill or capital constraints can help households become more resilient and manage climatic variability.

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Poor Households' Productive Investments of Cash Transfers: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Niger

2016-09, Stoeffler, Quentin, Mills, Bradford, Premand, Patrick

Cash transfer programs have spread rapidly as an instrument to raise household consumption and reduce poverty. Questions remain about the sustainability of cash transfer impacts in low-income settings such as Sub-Saharan Africa and, in particular, on whether cash transfers can foster productive investments in addition to raising immediate consumption among the very poor. This paper presents evidence that a cash transfer project in rural Niger induced investments in assets and productive activities that were sustained among the very poor 18 months after project completion. Results show lasting increases in livestock assets and participation in saving groups (tontines). Cash transfers also contributed to improved agricultural productivity, but no effects in terms of diversification of other household enterprises are found. Productive asset gains are, notably, largest among the poorest of the poor, suggesting that small regular cash transfers combined with enhanced saving mechanisms can relax constraints to asset accumulation among the extreme poor.