Person:
Honorati, Maddalena
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Development economics,
Applied microeconomics
Degrees
Departments
Global Practice on Social Protection and Labor, The World Bank
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
May 30, 2023
Biography
Maddalena Honorati is a senior economist at the Social Protection and Labor Department in the World Bank which she joined in 2005. Maddalena holds a PhD in Economics from Bocconi University and an M.Sc. from Pompeu Fabra University. Before joining the Social Protection team in 2009, she worked for the Development Research Group at the World Bank on firm productivity, determinants of informality and the impact of investment climate regulations on firm performance. Recently, her research interest has focused on the design and evaluation of social safety nets and active labor market programs in developing countries as well as the measurement of social protection system performance. She authored global, regional and country reports on social safety nets and jobs diagnostics, research papers on labor market issues including policies to foster skills and employability and promote entrepreneurship as well as supported operational implementation of such programs and policies in developing countries, notably in Ghana, Kenya, Philippines and Ecuador.
Publication Search Results
1 - 10 of 26
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Publication
Improving Access to Jobs and Earnings Opportunities : The Role of Activation and Graduation Policies in Developing Countries
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-03-01)Throughout the developing world there is a growing demand for advice on the design of policies to facilitate access of the most vulnerable individuals to jobs, while reducing their dependency from public income support schemes. Even though these policies are common to both the activation and graduation agendas, a separation is needed as the graduation of beneficiaries out of poverty is a much more ambitious agenda. This paper proposes a simple policy framework highlighting the most common barriers for productive employment. It also reviews the topic of incentive compatibility of income support schemes and employment support programs that are used to address them. The paper finds that, especially in middle income countries, activation and active labor market programs play an important role connecting individuals to jobs and improving earnings opportunities. In low income countries, these programs are far from being a panacea to graduate beneficiaries out of poverty. Furthermore, only scant evidence is available on the pathways to graduation and significant knowledge gaps remain. More cross-disciplinary research is needed to strengthen the evidence base and develop recommendations for different contexts and capacity levels. -
Publication
Entrepreneurship Programs in Developing Countries : A Meta Regression Analysis
( 2013-04)Fostering entrepreneurship is widely perceived to be a critical policy agenda to expand employment and earning opportunities and to reduce poverty. Sound macroeconomic conditions and business environment including infrastructure, regulation, and legal environment have typically been emphasized to increase entrepreneurial activities and create jobs. While these remain relevant, in developing countries, increasing attention is being paid to the role of labor policies that aim to reduce constraints and enhance productivity among the self-employed and small-scale entrepreneurs. The next section describes the procedure for constructing data and discusses main features of the entrepreneurship programs in our sample studies. Section three presents a standardization and estimation strategy using Meta regressions and discusses methodology. Section four then discusses the main findings of the Meta analysis. Finally, Section five concludes the study. -
Publication
Entrepreneurship Programs in Developing Countries : A Meta Regression Analysis
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-04)This paper provides a synthetic and systematic review on the effectiveness of various entrepreneurship programs in developing countries. It adopts a meta-regression analysis using 37 impact evaluation studies that were in the public domain by March 2012, and draws out several lessons on the design of the programs. The paper observes wide variation in program effectiveness across different interventions depending on outcomes, types of beneficiaries, and country context. Overall, entrepreneurship programs have a positive and large impact for youth and on business knowledge and practice, but no immediate translation into business set-up and expansion or increased income. At a disaggregate level by outcome groups, providing a package of training and financing is more effective for labor activities. In addition, financing support appears more effective for women and business training for existing entrepreneurs than other interventions to improve business performance. -
Publication
The Nuts and Bolts of Designing and Implementing Training Programs in Developing Countries
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-06)Training programs mainly address market failures related to lack of skills (technical, cognitive, non-cognitive). This paper conducts a comprehensive review of training programs effectiveness in developing countries. Based on relevant international experiences, the paper highlights key design features associated with program success as well as implementation challenges and discusses their policy implication. Success of training programs is deeply related with the content of the skills provided and how well they serve the local labor demand (demand-driven design) and with the presence of a sound governance structure for training providers and beneficiaries. In particular, the effectiveness of training programs for youth tends to be higher when a 'comprehensive' approach is taken by combining different types of training with complementary support services. The ultimate goal is to inform new program design and improve the performance of current training programs. -
Publication
Corruption, the Rusiness Environment, and Small Business Growth in India
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-08)This paper estimates a dynamic business growth equation on a sample of small-scale manufacturers. The results suggest that excessive labor regulation, power shortages, and problems of access to finance are significant influences on industrial growth in India. The expected annual sales growth rate of an enterprise is lower where labor regulation is greater, power shortages are more severe, and cash flow constraints are stronger. The effects of each of the three factors on business growth seem also to depend on a fourth element, namely, corruption. Specifically, labor regulation affects the growth only of enterprises for which corruption is not a factor in business decisions. By contrast, power shortages seem to be a drag on the growth only of enterprises self-reportedly held back by corruption. Lastly, sales growth is constrained by cash flow only in businesses that are not affected by labor regulation, power shortages, or corruption. The analysis uses corruption as a proxy for the quality of "property rights institutions" and considers labor regulation and small business financing as instances of "contracting institutions." The findings on the interaction between corruption and other aspects of business environment then seems to indicate that the quality of property rights institutions exerts more abiding influence on economic outcomes than the quality of contracting institutions. Moreover, there might also be a hierarchy among contracting institutions in their effect on manufacturing growth. -
Publication
Corruption, Business Environment, and Small Business Fixed Investment in India
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-09)This paper estimates a structural dynamic business investment equation and an error correction model of fixed assets growth on a sample of predominantly small and mid-size manufacturers in India. The results suggest that excessive labor regulation, power shortages, and problems of access to finance are all significant factors in industrial growth in the country. The estimated effects of labor regulation, power shortages and access to finance on the rate of business investment all vary by states' levels of industrial development and. Perhaps more importantly, they also depend on a fourth institutional factor, namely, corruption. The rate of fixed investment is significantly lower where power shortages are more severe and labor regulation is stronger over the full sample, but each of these impacts is also greater for businesses self-reportedly affected by corruption. Although access to finance does not seem to influence the rate of investment for most firms, there is evidence that investment decisions are constrained by cash flow in enterprises that are unaffected by corruption or power shortages. There are nuances to this story as we take into account regional specificity, but the key result always holds that labor regulation, power shortages and access to finance influence the rate of fixed investment in ways that depend on the incidence of corruption. In interpreting this finding, we would like to think of corruption as a proxy for the quality of property rights institutions in the sense of Acemoglu and Johnson (2005). On the other hand, we regard labor regulation and the financial environment of small businesses in India as instances of what Acemoglu and Johnson (2005) call 'contracting institutions'. The analysis finds that the interaction between corruption and other aspects of the institutional environment of fixed investment decisions could be seen consistent with the Acemoglu-Johnson view that the quality of property rights institutions exerts more abiding influence on economic outcomes than the quality of contracting institutions. -
Publication
Entrepreneurship Programs in Developing Countries : A Meta Regression Analysis
(Elsevier, 2014-06)This paper provides a review on the effectiveness of various entrepreneurship programs in developing countries. We adopt a meta regression analysis using 37 impact evaluation studies that were in the public domain by March 2012, and draw out several lessons on the design of the programs. We observe a wide variation in program effectiveness across different interventions depending on outcomes, types of beneficiaries, and country context. Overall, entrepreneurship programs have a positive and large impact for youth and on business knowledge and practice, but no immediate translation into business setup and expansion or increased income. At a disaggregate level by outcome groups, providing a package of training and financing is more effective for labor activities. Additionally, financing support appears more effective for women and business training for existing entrepreneurs than other interventions to improve business performance. -
Publication
The Impact of Private Sector Internship and Training on Urban Youth in Kenya
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-08)This study uses a randomized experiment to evaluate the impacts of the training and internship program piloted in Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu counties by the Kenya Private Sector Alliance and the Government of Kenya with support from the World Bank’s Kenya Youth Empowerment Project. The program provided three months of classroom-based technical training coupled with three months of internships in private firms to vulnerable youths between ages 15 and 29 years, with vulnerable being defined as those out of school and/or with no permanent job. The analysis in this paper is based on survey data collected before the program started (July 2012) and 15 months after the program ended (July 2014). The results of the impact evaluation show that the program has been successful in placing youths in paid jobs and has contributed to an increase of 15 percent in current employment among male participants. The evaluation also found that the program has had positive effects on wage earnings, especially those of females and among older males, with wages increasing by about K Sh 5,000 for males and by K Sh 7,500 for females. With a total unit cost of K Sh 97,000 per beneficiary, an estimated K Sh 6,768 monthly wage for males and K Sh 9,623 monthly wage for females, the program’s benefits exceeded the costs for males and females. The program also encouraged youths to participate in either (certified) skills training or an internship program, and helped to increase the probability of participants’ opening a bank account and accumulating savings (for females). -
Publication
The Role of Social Protection in Reducing Poverty in Ghana
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-10)The National Social Protection Policy under preparation establishes objectives, scope, and institutional and administrative arrangements that are designed to enhance the complementarities and coordination of the SP system, the objective being to halve extreme poverty by 2025. -
Publication
Towards a Just Coal Transition Labor Market Challenges and People’s Perspectives from Wielkopolska
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-10-18)Part of a three-region set of papers analyzing coal-related labor market challenges in Poland, this paper focuses on Wielkopolska, which is most advanced in the transition out of coal. Finding viable job transitions is of enormous importance. The findings call for a more territorial-oriented approach to brokering the coal transition, rather than a sectoral one. First, even though limited from a regional perspective (4,000 workers), affected jobs are highly concentrated in a few already lagging and depopulating municipalities. Second, while coal-related workers are similarly skilled as other workers in Wielkopolska, non-coal related workers in the at-risk municipalities are substantially less skilled, exposing them to potential displacement effects. Finally, while ready to work and to be re-skilled, discrete choice experiments about their job attribute preferences show that all workers are averse both to commuting and relocating for work, even more so than in Silesia and Lower Silesia. Complementary social protection and employment support will be needed, and the paper suggests some policy options based on international experience. The paper concludes by illustrating how a big-data driven job-matching tool, calibrated on the Polish labor market, could be used to assist caseworkers in identifying “viable-job-transition-pathways” for affected workers as well as to help policymakers identify reskilling needs and attract investments.