Muller, Noel

Person:
Muller, Noel

Global Practice on Social Protection and Labor

Author Name Variants

Muller, Noel, Muller, N., Muller, Noël

Fields of Specialization

Skills development, Employment, Human development, Labor markets, Latin America, Colombia, Ukraine

External Links

RePEc

Departments

Global Practice on Social Protection and Labor

Last updated:October 6, 2025

Biography

Noël Muller, a French national, is a Consultant Economist in the World Bank’s Social Protection and Labor Practice. In this position, he conducts empirical research and supports World Bank’s teams in Latin America and Ukraine in advising client countries on the development of social and employment programs. His research focuses on skills development, the role of skills in the labor market, employment policies, and the constraints faced by the jobless and vulnerable workers. Previously, he worked at the Paris-based OECD Development Centre on informal employment in Latin America and social cohesion policies in Vietnam. He holds a Masters in International and Development Economics from the University Paris-Dauphine and a Bachelor in Economics from the University Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/10986/38964

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Publication Search Results

Now showing1 - 10 of 11

The Power and Roots of Aspirations
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2025-01-24) Fruttero, Anna; Muller, Noel; Calvo-González, Óscar
Aspirations have become a common theme in empirical economics studies but there is no unified understanding of the range of outcomes they influence, the factors that shape them, and how to measure them. We survey this growing literature. We argue that there is compelling evidence to consider aspirations as a useful lens to analyze human behavior and development outcomes, at the individual and aggregate levels, in poorer and richer countries. The empirical evidence aligns with the theory that high aspirations can lead individuals to achieve better educational, labor market, and other outcomes and can contribute to making countries more equal and prosperous. The empirical evidence also confirms that the mix of social and circumstantial factors shaping aspirations tends to hinder the aspirations of the disadvantaged—such as the poor, immigrants, and women—and can contribute to vicious circles of poverty, high inequality, low social mobility, and low growth. However, high aspirations should not be considered an end in themselves as they can backfire, with deleterious effects, if unmatched with opportunities. Further, we argue that definitional and measurement issues can affect the understanding of the topic and that studies should more explicitly describe their measures of aspirations to ensure that divergent underlying concepts are not mistaken.
Policies for Aspirations. And Opportunities
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-06-04) Muller, Noël; Fruttero, Anna; Calvo-González, Óscar; de Hoop, Jacobus
Policy interventions that foster aspirations, such as those using role models, are increasingly being implemented so that students, women, microentrepreneurs, farmers, and poor individuals can achieve untapped opportunities. Several of these interventions have successfully enhanced educational achievements, labor market participation, and business activities. However, raising the aspirations of individuals when they do not have opportunities to realize them can generate frustration and make them worse off. This paper argues that effective policy interventions need to account for both aspirations and opportunities and proposes a framework to consider both elements. The paper highlights how addressing either element in isolation can lead to unfavorable outcomes, such as falling into an aspiration trap (when low aspirations prevent people from seizing available opportunities), experiencing frustration (when aspirations are enhanced without matching opportunities), or remaining in a poverty trap (when both aspirations and opportunities are low). The paper discusses various policy approaches to raising aspirations and opportunities in light of these scenarios and the challenges of aligning the two elements.
Gendered Impacts of Climate Change: Evidence from Weather Shocks
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-05-16) Fruttero, Anna; Halim, Daniel; Broccolini, Chiara; Coelho, Bernardo; Gninafon, Horace; Muller, Noël
Climate change is one of the defining challenges of our time. While the impacts of climate change on people’s well-being can hardly be denied, it may not be as obvious that the impacts could differ by gender. However, as the COVID-19 pandemic has shown, a shock can impact men and women differently due to social norms and pre-existing gender differences. This paper reviews the economic literature linking weather shocks (such as floods, droughts, and extreme temperatures, among others) and a large range of outcomes (from endowments to economic opportunities and agency). Men and women indeed have specific vulnerabilities and exposures. Specific physiological vulnerabilities are relatively minor: boys are more vulnerable to shocks in utero and girls and women to heat. The biggest gendered impacts are due to existing gaps and social responses to shocks. In places with strong boy preferences, families facing scarcity due to disasters are more likely to give food and other resources to boys, take their daughters out of school or marry them young, or withdraw women from agricultural work so they focus on household chores. During or after weather shocks, boys can also be taken out of schools to be put at work and men working in agriculture are often forced to migrate to find alternative sources of income. Unless climate policy acknowledges and accounts for these differences, climate change will remain an amplifier of existing gender inequalities.
The Demand for Digital and Complementary Skills in Southeast Asia
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-05-31) Solatorio, Aivin; Cunningham, Wendy; Moroz, Harry; Muller, Noël; Solatorio, Aivin Vicquierra
As the economies of Southeast Asia continue adopting digital technologies, policy makers increasingly ask how to prepare the workforce for emerging labor demands. However, little is known about the skills that workers need to adapt to these changes. Skills profiles in low- and middle-income countries are typically derived from data collected in the United States, which is known to inaccurately reflect their occupational skills. This paper uses online job postings data from Malaysia to identify the digital, cognitive, and socioemotional skills required for digital and non-digital occupations. The skills profiles for each occupation are then merged with labor force survey data from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam to sketch skills profiles of the workforces in these countries. Using descriptive statistics and linear probability model regressions, the paper finds evidence that highly digital occupations require not only digital skills, but also cognitive and socioemotional skills. Similarly, virtually all occupations, regardless of the digital intensity of the job, require some basic or intermediate digital skills. Pairwise correlations and a factor analysis confirm the complementarity between digital skills and different subsets of cognitive and socioemotional skills. The data also confirm that, even with the excitement about the digital revolution, the bulk of employment in Southeast Asia is in low- (around two-thirds) or medium-digital (around one-third) occupations. Only between 1 and 5 percent of jobs are highly digital in the four countries studied. These findings suggest that as education and training systems adapt to teach basic digital skills, they will need to continue to foster cognitive and socioemotional skills.
Dreams and Barriers: Aspirations, Expectations, and Schooling Outcomes of Indonesian Students
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-12) Johnson, Hillary C.; Muller, Noël
High aspirations for their future motivate youth to strive toward them and achieve better outcomes. However, the influence of perceived constraints on the motivational power of is unclear: do high aspirations motivate independently of constraints or only when expected constraints seem workable This paper explores this question with a gender lens and using a large, cross-sectional survey of adolescent students in Indonesia. The findings show that most students aspire to high education levels, but only half of the students expect to complete the level to which they aspire. Although girls have higher aspirations than boys, girls are less likely to expect to achieve their aspirations. Years of aspired education are strongly correlated with better current schooling outcomes (grades and attendance), and while expectations are also associated with better schooling outcomes, the relationship is nonlinear. Aspirations seem to motivate students despite their perceived constraints, unless there is a large gap between their aspirations and expectations. Although there are similar patterns for boys and girls, aspirations are more correlated with boys’ attendance, and expectations are more strongly related to boys’ grades and attendance. Students cite both mental barriers and economic constraints to achieving their aspirations, especially the latter for girls. The results suggest that both male and female Indonesian students could benefit from programs that boost aspirations and address psychological and economic constraints.
The Power and Roots of Aspirations: A Survey of the Empirical Evidence
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-07) Fruttero, Anna; Muller, Noel; Calvo-Gonzalez, Oscar
Aspirations have become a common theme in empirical economics studies, but there is no unified understanding of the range of outcomes they influence, the factors that shape them, and how to measure them. This paper surveys this growing literature. The paper argues that there is compelling evidence to consider aspirations as a useful lens to analyze human behavior and development outcomes, at the individual and aggregate levels, in poorer and richer countries. The empirical evidence aligns with the theory that high aspirations can lead individuals to achieve better educational, labor market, and other outcomes and can contribute to making countries more equal and prosperous. The empirical evidence also confirms that the mix of social and circumstantial factors shaping aspirations tends to hinder the aspirations of the disadvantaged—such as the poor, immigrants, and women—and can contribute to vicious circles of poverty, high inequality, low social mobility, and low growth. However, high aspirations should not be considered as an end in themselves as they can backfire, with deleterious effects, if unmatched with opportunities. Further, the paper argues that definitional and measurement issues can affect the understanding of the topic and that studies should more explicitly describe their measures of aspirations to ensure that divergent underlying concepts are not mistaken.
What Employers Actually Want: Skills in Demand in Online Job Vacancies in Ukraine
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-05) Safir, Abla; Muller, Noël
Online job vacancies from a Ukrainian website were explored to assess the skills that employers look for among their new hires. The demand for cognitive, socioemotional, and technical skills across a range of medium- and high-skilled occupations were assessed. Most employers highly demand all three skills categories, more so than education level. Most occupations demand a variety of socioemotional skills, while the demand for cognitive and technical skills focuses on one or two skills. Cognitive and socioemotional skills appear as complementary: they are demanded similarly for a given occupation. Overall, online job vacancies are an informative complement to traditional sources to assess skills in demand.
Why Do Indonesian Adolescent Boys Have Poorer Schooling Outcomes than Girls?
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-11) Perova, Elizaveta; Muller, Noel
Indonesian secondary students perform worse academically than their peers in other countries, especially boys. In the 2015 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests, Indonesia ranked among the worse of the 72 participating countries. More than half of 15-year-olds could read a text but could not answer simple questions related to it; that was only the case of 14 percent of students in high-performing Vietnam and 20 percent in member countries of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). While Indonesian boys and girls had similar average scores in math and science, girls outperformed boys in average scores of reading.
Skills for a Modern Ukraine
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2017-01-03) Kupets, Olga; Del Carpio, Ximena; Olefir, Anna; Muller, Noël
Ukraine’s economic progress since its independence in the early 1990s has been uneven, in part due to the slow pace of reforms, unfavorable demographic factors, and low productivity. One of the key factors limiting success is the inadequacy of the skills of Ukraine’s workforce with the needs of a modern economy. While the country demonstrates a strong record of educational attainment and acquisition of foundational skills, the post-secondary education and training system fails to equip workers with the right advanced skills for labor market success. This study provides new evidence on the nature of skills valued in the labor market, reviews the institutional constraints hindering the development and use of workforce’s skills, and proposes a set of policy options. This study argues that, to improve skills formation and use, Ukraine needs to renew its public policies on post-secondary education, labor-market intermediation and information, and labor regulations. Drawing on household and firm surveys, the study finds that workers need a mix of advanced cognitive skills (like problem solving and communication), socio-emotional skills (like self-management and teamwork), and technical skills (like computer programing or sale skills) to be successful in the labor market and meet employers’ demand. These skills are not necessarily explicitly taught in traditional learning settings. Policy makers should therefore rethink the content of post-secondary education and training to focus on the development of skills for the labor market rather than only attendance. To do so, establishing steady links between education institutions and enterprises, by setting up occupation standards and adapting curricula to firm demand, is crucial. An essential instrument to identify the demand for skills and facilitate fruitful investments in skills formation is a labor market information system—which provides reliable information on labor market prospects across post-secondary education fields and institutions and job requirements and characteristics to students, their families, and jobseekers. Nonetheless, a better formation of skills would only be beneficial if most of the workforce can put them at use in jobs, promoted by better labor regulations.
Minds and Behaviors at Work: Boosting Socioemotional Skills for Latin America’s Workforce
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-07-11) Cunningham, Wendy; Acosta, Pablo; Muller, Noël
Although the Latin American region has shown an impressive growth in educational attainment over the past two decades, that education has failed to yield expected benefits. A mounting body of research and policy debates argues that the quantity of education is not an adequate metric of human capital acquisition. Rather, individuals’ skills—what they actually know and can do—should stand as policy targets and be fostered across the life course. Evidence from around the world shows that both cognitive and socio-emotional skills are demanded by employers and favorably affect a range of outcomes, including educational attainment and employment outcomes. Through original empirical research investigating the role of cognitive and socio-emotional skills in shaping adults’ labor market outcomes in Bolivia, Colombia, El Salvador, and Peru, supplemented by similar studies in other Latin American countries, this review confirms that cognitive skills matter for reaping labor market gains in terms of higher wages and formal jobs in Latin America; but so do socio-emotional skills. Moreover, socio-emotional skills seem to particularly influence labor force participation and tertiary education attendance as a platform to build knowledge. The study also presents a policy framework for skills development by: (i) providing insights by developmental psychologists about when people are neuro-biologically, socio-emotionally, and situationally ready to develop socio-emotional skills, and (ii) suggesting new directions in cognitive development.