Person:
Robalino, Robalino, David A.
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Labor markets,
Social Insurance
Degrees
Departments
Labor and Youth, Human Development Network, World Bank
Employment and Development Program, German Institute of Labor (IZA)
Employment and Development Program, German Institute of Labor (IZA)
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
January 31, 2023
Biography
David Robalino is the Lead Economist and Leader of the Labor and Youth Team in the Human Development Anchor of the World Bank. He also serves as Co-Director of the Employment and Development program at IZA – the Institute for the Study of the Labor. Since joining the Bank David has been working on issues related to social security, labor markets and fiscal policy. He has worked in several countries in Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia. David has published on issues related to macroeconomics and labor markets, social insurance and pensions, health financing, the economics of HIV/AIDS, and the economics of climate change. More recently David has been working on issues related to the design of unemployment benefits systems in middle income countries, the extension of social insurance programs to the informal sector, and the integration of social protection and education/training policies to improve labor market outcomes and productivity growth. Prior to joining the Bank David was a researcher at the RAND Corporation where he was involved in research on health, population and labor, climate change, and the development of quantitative methods for policy analysis under conditions of uncertainty. David also served in the Presidential Committee for Social Security Reform in Ecuador. David did his graduate studies at the Sorbonne University in Paris and the RAND Graduate School in Santa Monica – California.
Publication Search Results
1 - 5 of 5
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Publication
Jobs for Brazil’s Poor : Social Protection Programs and Labor Supply Impacts on the Poor in Brazil
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-03)The World Bank is carrying out a program of Analytic and Advisory Activities (the Labor AAA) focused on the interface between social protection programs and labor supply and productivity. This focus relates to the debates in Brazil surrounding the issue of helping transfer beneficiaries graduate from poverty and from dependence on transfer incomes. The AAA is structured along two pillars. Pillar I addresses questions related to the impacts of explicit and implicit public transfers on labor supply and savings decisions. In particular, what is the effect of public transfers such as Bolsa Familia and those related to the social insurance system (pensions and unemployment) on work incentives, early entry and retirement, sector choice, and ultimately, public expenditures, human capital accumulation and growth. Pillar II focuses on program design and evaluation. The and goal is to identify how the portfolio of transfer and active labor market programs can be optimized to enhance the employability of the poor, help promote their graduation from poverty, and, ultimately, from dependence on transfer income. In addition, the Labor AAA includes a component to assess public perceptions about Social Protection programs. The Labor AAA is a living program that seeks to respond to questions posed by Brazilian policy-makers as they strengthen the education-social protection-labor market nexus. This approach is helping convene the different stakeholders at the federal level by bringing evidence and policy analysis to the debates. -
Publication
From Right to Reality : Incentives, Labor Markets, and the Challenge of Universal Social Protection in Latin America and the Caribbean
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2012-03-13)This series was created in 2003 to promote debate, disseminate information and analysis, and convey the excitement and complexity of the most topical issues in economic and social development in Latin America and the Caribbean. This volume aims to move the debate forward by: 1) developing a common policy framework for the region's Social Protection (SP) system as a whole, including health insurance; 2) providing guidelines on ways to extend coverage through rationalizing financing mechanisms and the design of redistributive arrangements; and 3) making the case for improved coordination of policies and programs. Building on careful, detailed analysis of a wealth of data on social protection programs across Latin America and the Caribbean, this book addresses these challenges in a thorough yet accessible manner. Although the analysis is comprehensive, the authors focus primarily on three fundamental questions that must be faced by any effort to strengthen social protection in the region: how can programs protect the most vulnerable without promoting informality and dampening incentives to work and save? How can programs ensure that scarce public resources are used for subsidies that are transparent, fair, and effective-and not for badly targeted and regressive benefits for formal sector workers? Finally, how can programs reinforce human capital development so that the more mobile workers that the region needs are able to insure themselves through savings or risk-pooling arrangements, thus reducing vulnerability and the need for subsidies? -
Publication
Social Protection in Latin America : Achievements and Limitations
( 2010-05-01)Social protection systems in Latin America have been transformed in the past two decades. Until the 1980s, those who were not covered by the social security arrangements available primarily in the urban formal sector received little public assistance beyond universal subsidies for some food or fuel purchases. Since the 1990s, the introduction of non-contributory social insurance programs (including "social pensions") and conditional cash transfers has substantially extended the coverage and improved the incidence of social assistance. However, the organic growth of subsidized social assistance in parallel to the older social insurance system, financed largely out of taxes on formal sector employment, has led to a dual system that is neither properly equitable nor efficient. The twin challenges that now face social protection in Latin America are to better integrate those two halves of the system, and to develop programs that promote sustainable self-reliance, by moving from "safety nets" to "opportunity ropes." -
Publication
Ex-Ante Methods to Assess the Impact of Social Insurance Policies on Labor Supply with an Application to Brazil
( 2009-08-01)This paper solves and estimates a stochastic model of optimal inter-temporal behavior to assess how changes in the design of the unemployment benefits and pension systems in Brazil could affect savings rates, the share of time that individuals spend outside of the formal sector, and retirement decisions. Dynamics depend on five main parameters: preferences regarding consumption and leisure, preferences regarding formal Vs. informal work, attitudes towards risks, the rate of time preference, and the distribution of an exogenous shock that affects movements in and out of the social security system (given individual decisions). The yearly household survey is used to create a pseudo panel by age-cohorts and estimate the joint distribution of model parameters based on a generalized version of the Gibbs sampler. The model does a good job in replicating the distribution of the members of a given cohort across states (in or out of the social security / active or retired). Because the parameters are related to individual preferences or exogenous shocks, the joint distribution is unlikely to change when the social insurance system changes. Thus, the model is used to explore how alternative policy interventions could affect behaviors and through this channel benefit levels and fiscal costs. The results from various simulations provide three main insights: (i) the Brazilian SI system today might generate distortions (lower savings rates and less formal employment) that increase the costs of the system and might generate regressive redistribution; (ii) there are important interactions between the unemployment benefits and pension systems, which calls for joint policy analysis when considering reforms; and (iii) current distortions could be reduced by creating an actuarial link between contributions and benefits and then combining matching contributions and anti-poverty targeted transfers to cover individuals with limited or no savings capacity. -
Publication
Achieving Effective Social Protection for All in Latin America and the Caribbean : From Right to Reality
(World Bank, 2010)Slow progress in improving the coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean's (LAC's) traditional social protection (SP) programs, combined with the deepening of democracy, have led to calls for a new social contract to provide effective social protection to all citizens. This book highlights the main findings of a regional study by the World Bank, from right to reality: how Latin America and the Caribbean can achieve universal social protection by improving redistribution and adapting programs to labor markets. The report analyzes LAC's social insurance (SI) systems and highlights growing concerns about the incentives they may create and the behaviors they may incite on the part of workers, employers and service providers. It offers an economic analysis of the roots of these problems and suggests a way forward to achieve universal coverage in an equitable manner. The report argues that a coherent overall vision for the SP system should be established if such problems are to be understood and resolved. The goal is to turn the theoretical right to social protection, which is enshrined in many of the region's constitutions and laws, into a reality for all of LAC's population. A central message of the report is that SP systems need to respond to the realities of LAC's labor markets, especially the prevalence of informality and frequent changes of employment.