Fiszbein, Ariel

Person:
Fiszbein, Ariel

Human Development Network, World Bank

Fields of Specialization

Social Protection, Governance

Departments

Human Development Network, World Bank

Last updated: February 1, 2023

Biography

Ariel Fiszbein is Chief Economist for the Human Development Network at the World Bank. Mr. Fiszbein holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley. He joined the World Bank in 1991 and has held several positions including that of coordinator of the poverty reduction team at the World Bank Institute, coordinator of the Bank’s program in human development for the southern cone countries in Latin America, Lead Economist in the Human Development Department for Latin America and the Caribbean and Adviser to the Bank’s Chief Economist and senior vice-President for Development Economics. In the latter position, he coordinated the Bank’s Development Impact Evaluation initiative. He has published extensively on issues of social policy. He has taught at the Universidad de San Andres in Buenos Aires and was the secretary of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA) between 1998 and 2005.

Full item page

Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 12

Conditional Cash Transfers : Reducing Present and Future Poverty
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2009) Schady, Norbert; Fiszbein, Ariel; Ferreira, Francisco H.G.; Keleher, Niall; Grosh, Margaret; Olinto, Pedro; Skoufias, Emmanuel
The report shows that there is good evidence that conditional cash transfers (CCTs) have improved the lives of poor people. Transfers generally have been well targeted to poor households, have raised consumption levels, and have reduced poverty, by a substantial amount in some countries. Offsetting adjustments that could have blunted the impact of transfers, such as reductions in the labor market participation of beneficiaries, have been relatively modest. Moreover, CCT programs often have provided an entry point to reforming badly targeted subsidies and upgrading the quality of safety nets. The report thus argues that CCTs have been an effective way to redistribute income to the poor, while recognizing that even the best-designed and best-managed program cannot fulfill all of the needs of a comprehensive social protection system. CCTs therefore need to be complemented with other interventions, such as workfare or employment programs and social pensions. The report also considers the rationale for conditioning the transfers on the use of specific health and education services by program beneficiaries. Conditions can be justified if households are under investing in the human capital of their children, for example, if they hold incorrect beliefs about the returns to these investments; if there is "incomplete altruism" between parents and their children; or if there are large externalities to investments in health and education. Political economy considerations also may favor conditional over unconditional transfers: taxpayers may be more likely to support transfers to the poor if they are linked to efforts to overcome poverty in the long term, particularly when the efforts involve actions to improve the welfare of children.
Social Protection, Poverty and the Post-2015 Agenda
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-05) Kanbur, Ravi; Fiszbein, Ariel; Yemtsov, Ruslan
Social protection is absent from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and only recently has gained some prominence in the post-2015 discourse. In the past quarter century, however, rising inequality has often accompanied economic growth. At the same time, the growing importance of risk and vulnerability on the wellbeing of the poor has been recognized. Further, there is now a consensus on adopting more ambitious goals on poverty reduction. Defining social protection as a collection of programs that address risk, vulnerability, inequality and poverty through a system of transfers in cash or in kind, this paper argues that social protection needs to be on the post-2015 agenda as a key element of the discourse. It provides an empirical overview of social protection around the world based on the World Bank's Atlas of Social Protection: Indicators of Resilience and Equity (ASPIRE) data set. Focusing on the goal of ending poverty, the paper estimates that social protection programs are currently preventing 150 million people from falling into poverty. Based on the data set, the paper develops, tentatively and for discussion, a set of candidate goals, indicators and targets for the acceleration of poverty reduction through social protection. The authors ask what it would take for social protection programs to contribute to halving the poverty gap in a country. They show that if all countries could achieve the actual poverty reduction efficiency already observed in the top quartile of countries, then 70 percent of the countries in the sample could achieve this goal. However, for 30 percent of the countries, even reaching the top quartile on efficiency will not be enough -- for these countries, the issue is one of budgetary adequacy.
Matching Reforms to Institutional Realities : A Framework for Assessing Social Service Delivery Reform Strategies in Developing Countries
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-07) Matsuda, Yasuhiko; Fiszbein, Ariel
The paper is based on the premise that effective institutional reforms for service delivery require a carefully-considered institutional "fitting" process as opposed to transplantation of "international best practices." The paper asks how the specific institutional contexts of a given country limit options for service delivery reforms, and therefore how a feasible set of reform options may vary systematically across countries.
Cash Transfers, Children and the Crisis: Protecting Current and Future Investments
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2011-06) Ringold, Dena; Fiszbein, Ariel; Srinivasan, Santhosh
Developing countries have responded to the multiple shocks from the food, fuel and finance crises of 2008-2009 with a mix of responses aimed at both mitigating the immediate impacts of the crises on households (and particularly children), and protecting future investments in human capital. While some countries have introduced new safety net programs, others have modified and/or expanded existing ones. Since many countries have introduced conditional cash transfers (CCTs) in recent years, these programs have been used as an important starting point for a response. This paper aims to describe how conditional cash transfers have been used by different countries to respond to the crises (e.g. by expanding coverage and/or increasing benefit amounts), distill lessons about their effectiveness as crisis-response programs, identify design features that can facilitate their ability to respond to transient poverty shocks, and assess how they can complement other safety net programs.
Making Services Work : Indicators, Assessments, and Benchmarking of the Quality and Governance of Public Service Delivery in the Human Development Sectors
(2011-06-01) Ringold, Dena; Fiszbein, Ariel; Rogers, F. Halsey
Improving governance is central to improving results in human development. It is clear that money is not enough: improved outcomes from service delivery require better governance, including mechanisms for holding service providers accountable and appropriate incentives for performance. There is therefore a growing demand for indicators to measure how and whether these processes work, and how they affect health and education results. This paper makes the case for measuring governance policies and performance, and the quality of service delivery in health and education. It develops a framework for selecting and measuring a set of indicators and proposes options, drawing from new and innovative measurement tools and approaches. The paper proposes the adoption of a more systematic approach that will both facilitate the work of health and education policymakers and allow for cross-country comparisons and benchmarking.
Not a Popularity Contest : Bringing Rigor to Open Governments
(2011-09) Fiszbein, Ariel
Participation, dialogue, openness. These are values we cherish and aspire to. Who would be in favor of unilateralism, monologue, or isolation as guiding principles of development? The call for open development as a multipolar and more democratic search for solutions is almost a platitude. The issue is not whether openness, a positive attribute in itself, can promote better policies, but rather what are the conditions required for openness to succeed.
Assessing Our Work on Impact Evaluation
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-08) Goldstein, Markus; Skoufias, Emmanuel; Fiszbein, Ariel
Over the last several years, the World Bank has increasingly engaged in impact evaluations as means of building evidence for results. During this process, the Bank has also produced an extensive variety of knowledge products. However, there are several institutional and resource issues that constrain the effectiveness of our impact evaluation work. This brief outlines recent gains in the Bank's work on impact evaluation, highlights several issues, and proposes some options to continue improving and expanding the Bank's efforts in this area.
Pending Issues in Protection, Productivity Growth, and Poverty Reduction
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005-12) Arias, Omar; Blom, Andreas; Bosch, Mariano; Cunningham, Wendy; Fiszbein, Ariel; Lopez Acevedo, Gladys; Maloney, William; Saavedra, Jaime; Sanchez-Paramo, Carolina; Santamaria, Mauricio; Siga, Lucas; Arias, Omar
This paper selectively synthesizes much of the research on Latin American and Caribbean labor markets in recent years. Several themes emerge that are particularly relevant to ongoing policy dialogues. First, labor legislation matters, but markets may be less segmented than previously thought. The impetus to voluntary informality, which appears to be a substantial fraction of the sector, implies that the design of social safety nets and labor legislation needs to take a more integrated view of the labor market, taking into account the cost-benefit analysis workers and firms make about whether to interact with formal institutions. Second, the impact of labor market institutions on productivity growth has probably been underemphasized. Draconian firing restrictions increase litigation and uncertainty surrounding worker separations, reduce turnover and job creation, and poorly protect workers. But theory and anecdotal evidence also suggest that they, and other related state or union induced rigidities, may have an even greater disincentive effect on technological adoption, which accounts for half of economic growth. Finally, institutions can affect poverty and equity, although the effects seem generally small and channels are not always clear. Overall, the present constellation of labor regulations serves workers and firms poorly and both could benefit from substantial reform.
Estimating the Returns to Education in Argentina : 1992-2002
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005-09) Giovagnoli, Paula Inés; Fiszbein, Ariel; Patrinos, Harry Anthony
The authors estimate returns to schooling in urban Argentina for a 10-year period. In addition to comparable earnings functions, they also estimate the returns using quantile regression analysis to detect differences in the returns across the distribution. Over time, men in higher quantiles have higher returns to schooling compared with those in the lower quantiles. For women, returns are highest at the lowest quantile. The returns to education increased during the past decade. The authors do not rule out that increased demand for skills is driving the increasing returns over the decade.
Citizens, Politicians, and Providers : The Latin American Experience with Service Delivery Reform
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2005) Fiszbein, Ariel
Children regularly receiving health visits and education, the sick receiving proper and timely health care, safe water flowing out of the tap, electricity reliably reaching homes and businesses-these apparently simple events are taken for granted in developed countries. In Latin America, despite two decades of social and infrastructure improvements, the poor and many of the middle class make do with low-quality services. Far too many of the poor receive no services. Improving service delivery to the poor is both a widespread political demand, and central to the realization of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This book interprets service delivery successes, and failures in Latin America and provides guidance to policymakers, and development practitioners on shaping public action to provide better-quality services for all. Its analysis builds on the accountability framework developed in the Bank's World Development Report 2004: Making Services Work for Poor People, which emphasizes the behavior of people-from teachers to administrators, politicians, and rich and poor citizens-within the chain of interactions, from demand to actual service delivery. The report seeks to answer an essential question: If accountability relationships among citizens, policymakers, and service providers are key to effective service delivery, and there have been both systemic reforms (expanding national and local democracy), and an array of specific experiments (privatization, increased choice), why is service delivery in Latin America still so inequitable, and often of low quality?