Person:
Giugale, Marcelo
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Debt management,
Financial Integrity,
Public Finance
Degrees
Departments
Financial Advisory and Banking Services, World Bank Treasury
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
January 31, 2023
Biography
Marcelo Giugale is the Director of the World Bank’s Department of Financial Advisory and Banking Services—the team of professionals who help emerging and developing countries manage their reserves, lighten their debts, and hedge their risks. A former Director of country, regional, and global Departments, and an international development leader, his twenty-eight years of experience span the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Latin-America, and Africa, where he led senior-level policy dialogue and over thirty billion dollars in lending operations across the development spectrum. An elected Fellow of the US National Academy of Public Administration, he has published on macroeconomic policy, finance, subnational fiscal rules, development economics, business, agriculture, and applied econometrics. Notably, he was the chief editor of collections of policy notes published for the presidential transitions in Mexico (2000), Colombia (2002), Ecuador (2003), Bolivia (2006) and Peru (2006). In 2014, he authored “Economic Development: What Everyone Needs to Know”, a featured volume by Oxford University Press. His opinion editorials are published in the leading newspapers and blog-sites of the USA, Europe, Latin-America, and Africa. He received decorations from the governments of Bolivia and Peru, and taught at the American University in Cairo, The London School of Economics, and the Universidad Católica Argentina. A citizen of Argentina and Italy, he holds a PhD and a MSc in Economics from The London School of Economics, and a Summa-Cum-Laude BA in Economics from Universidad Católica Argentina. You can watch his TED talk (“Ending Poverty”) and follow him on Twitter at @Marcelo_WB.
Publication Search Results
1 - 10 of 14
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Publication
Colombia : The Economic Foundation of Peace
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2003)The book intends to trigger, and support policy debate in Colombia. The first part distills four thematic chapters, responsive to the country's current realities, as well as to the five decades of development partnership with the Bank, spanning the entire development spectrum. First, violence, sustainable peace, and development introduces the reader to the source of violence - armed, and social conflicts, and drug trade prevalent in the country - to form a framework of understanding on the economic, and social costs for building peace, and enable sustainable growth. Second, such growth is examined within the macroeconomic, and fiscal framework, to ensure a healthy financial system, and create a business environment to foster private sector development. Third, such eventual success, drives us through Colombia's traditional socioeconomic progress, though through its recent setbacks as well - economic recession, increased macroeconomic instability, and judicial uncertainty - all eroding potential welfare gains. Fourth, and ultimately, the demand for governance and quality of government reveals the coexisting problems faced by strong and weak governance, and explores a strengthened governance based on selectivity and gradualism in building high quality government. To support this analysis, the second part, provides sector-specific realities, including its fiscal framework, public debt management, financial sector and pension reform. The development agenda calls for a government to reach a higher growth plateau, allowing a chance for sharing in that growth, and making the state an icon of quality. -
Publication
Africa's Macroeconomic Story
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-10)Much of Sub-Saharan Africa's post-independence macroeconomic history has been characterized by boom-bust cycles. Growth accelerations have been common, but short lived. Weak policy formulation and implementation led to large external and fiscal imbalances, excessive debt accumulation, volatile inflation, and sharp exchange rate fluctuations. This characterization changed, however, in the mid-1990s, when debt relief and better macroeconomic policy began to provide a source of stability that has helped sustain robust growth throughout much of the region. In resource rich countries, the process was supported over the past few years by a dramatic increase in commodity prices. But resources are only one part of the story. Growth has exhibited impressive resilience even in the face of negative external shocks, as in 2008-2009. While the short-term outlook remains positive, over the medium term policy makers face new challenges. Several countries have the potential to greatly expand natural resource production and become major commodity exporters; volatile resource revenue will complicate their fiscal and monetary planning. Rising investor appetite for financial assets of frontier markets and the development of domestic debt markets will continue to broaden the menu of and trade-offs among financing options at a time when global interest rates may start sloping upward. Complex financing arrangements -- notably for private-public or public-public partnerships in infrastructure -- will become more common and will generate new types of fiscal commitments and contingencies. -
Publication
Collecting High-Frequency Data Using Mobile Phones : Do Timely Data Lead to Accountability?
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-01)As mobile phone ownership rates have risen dramatically in Africa, there has been increased interest in using mobile telephones as a data collection platform. This note draws on two largely successful pilot projects in Tanzania and South Sudan that used mobile phones for high-frequency data collection. Data were collected on a wide range of topics and in a manner that was cost-effective, flexible, and rapid. Once households were included in the survey, they tended to stick with it: respondent fatigue has not been a major issue. While attrition and nonresponse have been challenges in the Tanzania survey, these were due to design flaws in that particular survey, challenges that can be avoided in future similar projects. Ensuring use of the data to demand better service delivery and policy decisions turned out to be as challenging as collecting the high-quality data. Experiences in Tanzania suggest that good data can be translated into public accountability, but also demonstrate that just putting data out in the public domain is not enough. This note discusses lessons learned and offers suggestions for future applications of mobile phone surveys in developing countries, such as those planned for the World Bank's "Listening to Africa" initiative. -
Publication
Collecting High Frequency Panel Data in Africa Using Mobile Phone Interviews
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-06)As mobile phone ownership rates have risen in Africa, there is increased interest in using mobile telephony as a data collection platform. This paper draws on two pilot projects that use mobile phone interviews for data collection in Tanzania and South Sudan. The experience was largely a success. High frequency panel data have been collected on a wide range of topics in a manner that is cost effective, flexible (questions can be changed over time) and rapid. And once households respond to the mobile phone interviews, they tend not to drop out: even after 33 rounds of interviews in the Tanzania survey, respondent fatigue proved not to be an issue. Attrition and non-response have been an issue in the Tanzania survey, but in ways that are related to the way this survey was originally set up and that are fixable. Data and reports from the Tanzania survey are available online and can be downloaded from: www.listeningtodar.org. -
Publication
A Brave New World for Latin America
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2010-04)With variations across countries, Latin America's economic agenda will change over the next few years. Fiscal policy will be monitored more independently, and may lean more against cycles. Financial regulation will be heavier, and less attuned with a single international model. Innovation will be at the center of trade strategies. Equity will begin to replace equality as the driver of social programs. More state agencies will be managed by results, starting the long process of earning citizens' trust. The region will play a larger global role, led by Brazil. And if the world's economy holds, most Latin Americans will be on a faster development path. -
Publication
Collecting High Frequency Panel Data in Africa Using Mobile Phone Interviews
(Taylor and Francis, 2014-04-01)As mobile phone ownership rates have risen in Africa, there is increased interest in using mobile telephony as a data collection platform. This paper draws on two pilot projects that use mobile phone interviews for data collection in Tanzania and South Sudan. In both cases, high frequency panel data have been collected on a wide range of topics in a manner that is cost effective, flexible and rapid. Attrition has been problematic in both surveys, but can be explained by the resource and organizational constraints that both surveys faced. We analyze the drivers of attrition to generate ideas for how to improve performance in future mobile phone surveys. -
Publication
Shock Persistence and the Choice of Foreign Exchange Regime : An Empirical Note from Mexico
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2000-06)The academic and policy debate about optimal foreign exchange rate regimes for emerging economies, has focused more on the theoretical costs and benefits of possible regimes, than on their actual performance. The authors report on what can be called exchange-rate-regime-dependent differential shock persistence - that is, the time output takes to return to its trend after a negative shock - in a sample of countries representing various points on the spectrum of nominal foreign exchange flexibility. They find strong evidence that Mexico's stimulated output recovery after a negative external shock was faster (a third as long) when the country's policymakers let the nominal foreign exchange rate float, than when they fixed it, and much faster than in other developing countries that kept nominal foreign exchange rates constant, especially those that resorted to currency board arrangements to support that constancy. These results are insufficient to guide the choice of regime (they lack general equilibrium value, and are based on a limited sample of countries), but they highlight an important practical consideration in making that choice: How long it takes for output to adjust after negative shocks, is sensitive to the level of rigidity of the foreign exchange regime. This factor may be critical when the social costs of those adjustments are not negligible. -
Publication
A New Model for Market-Based Regulation of Subnational Borrowing : The Mexican Approach
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2000-06)Faced with weak sub-national finances that pose a risk to macroeconomic stability, Mexico's federal government in April 2000 established an innovative incentive framework to bring fiscal discipline to state and municipal governments. That framework is based on two pillars: an explicit renunciation of federal bail-outs, and a Basel-consistent link between the capital-risk weighting of bank loans to sub-national governments, and the borrower's credit rating. In theory, this new regulatory arrangement should reduce moral hazard among banks and their state, and municipal clients; differentiate interest rates on the basis of the borrower's creditworthiness; and, elicit a strong demand for institutional development at the sub-national level. But its access will depend on three factors critical to implementation: 1) Whether markets find the federal commitment not to bail out defaulting sub-national governments credible. 2) Whether sub-national governments have access to financing other than bank loans. 3) How well bank capital rules are enforced. -
Publication
Ecuador : An Economic and Social Agenda in the New Millennium
(World Bank: Washington, DC, 2003-05)The book focuses on three overarching themes: fiscal consolidation and growth; social development; and, quality of government, and, documents Ecuador's development trends, policies, and options. The fundamental challenges facing the country are identified within this book, and the solutions represent a break with the past: this is a proposal for an agenda with a broad, and integrated vision of economic, and social development in Ecuador. As a central message, the book outlines that although economic growth is a necessary condition to combat poverty, it would however be insufficient, unless growth is sustainable, and participatory, i.e., that broad sectors of the most vulnerable population (such as marginalized indigenous populations) are included. Thus, the argument for preserving stability with fiscal discipline, and accelerating growth with competitiveness, is based on a guaranteed balanced macroeconomic framework, that promotes economic expansion and competitiveness by making input markets - particularly the labor market - more flexible, by opening the economy to foreign trade, and eliminating trade policies. Expansion of the petroleum sector should be accelerated through legal and regulatory changes to prod fiscal stability, and promote private investments. Boosting sustainable, and equitable social development can be ensured by the government through actions focused on human capital development, improved quality of education and health services, and efficient social safety network. And in building a quality government that serves its people, and fights against corruption, the book stipulates regulatory reforms, and provision of direct services, within a strategy complemented with strengthened civil service, and deepening of the judicial reform, in the general context of decentralization. -
Publication
The Political Economy of Direct Dividend Transfers in Resource-Rich Countries: A Theoretical Consideration
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-02)The acceleration of natural resource discoveries across many parts of the developing world has highlighted the urgent need for solutions to the mismanagement of windfalls that has blighted many countries over the past half-century. One proposal involves distributing annually a share of resource rents to citizens in the form of direct dividend transfers. Although many scholars and policy makers have discussed the potential economic and political ramifications of the proposal from a normative perspective, few have analyzed positively the conditions under which such a policy may emerge as a politically rational choice. This policy research paper fills that gap by modeling the decision of political leaders to allocate resource revenues between cash transfers, public goods, power-preserving activities, and personal consumption. The analysis finds first that propitious political conditions, including competitive elections, undeveloped patronage networks, and a high degree of budgetary accountability, increase the share of resource revenues to be spent on citizens' welfare. The paper then shows that a high poverty headcount and inefficient public institutions will each strengthen the political incentive to provide direct dividend transfers relative to public goods. This combination of conditions is rare, which may explain why relatively few countries have implemented or plan to implement direct dividend transfers.