Person:
Sanchez, Carolina
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Labor economics,
Poverty and distributional analysis,
Gender,
Public policy,
Inequality and Shared Prosperity,
Jobs and Development
Degrees
Departments
Poverty and Equity Global Practice
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
January 31, 2023
Biography
Carolina Sánchez-Páramo, a Spanish national, is currently the Senior Director of the Poverty and Equity Global Practice (GP) at the World Bank. Prior to this assignment, she was the Poverty and Equity GP Practice Manager in the Europe and Central Asia region. Carolina has worked on operations, policy advice and analytical activities in Eastern Europe, Latin America and South Asia, and was part of the core team working on the WDR2012, “Gender Equality and Development”. Her main areas of interest and expertise include labor economics, poverty and distributional analysis, gender equality and welfare impacts of public policy. She has led reports on poverty and equity, labor markets and economic growth in several countries, as well as social sector operations. She has published articles in refereed journals and edited books on the topics described above. Carolina has a PhD in Economics from Harvard University.
Publication Search Results
1 - 8 of 8
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Publication
Closing the Gap in Education and Technology
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2003)This report focuses not only on the gaps facing Latin America in both education and technology, but especially on the interactions between the two. The central premise of the report is that skills and technology interact in important ways, and this relationship is a fundamental reason for the large observed differences in productivity and incomes across countries. This report argues that skills upgrading technological change, and their interaction are major factors behind total factor productivity growth. Skill-biased technological change is indeed being transferred today at faster speeds to LAC countries, as elsewhere. Technological change has been complementary with skill levels in Latin America in the last two decades. It is further estimated that firms have substantially increased the demand for educated workers in the region, particularly workers with tertiary education. This technological transformation appears to be intimately related to patterns of integration in the world economy. Firms in sectors with higher exposure to trade are subject to more competitive pressures. Adopting and adapting more advanced technologies and hiring and training more educated workers is one way to respond to this pressure to become more productive. The increased potential demand for education offers the possibility to accelerate productivity growth in the economy by closing the educational and technological gaps that Latin American countries exhibit with respect to their peers. -
Publication
Pending Issues in Protection, Productivity Growth, and Poverty Reduction
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005-12)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. -
Publication
Trade Liberalization and Labor Reform in Latin America and the Caribbean in the 1990s
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2002-05)This note synthesizes the findings of research on trade and labor in the region, including World Bank studies on: (i) trade and job quality, (ii) informality, and (iii) labor policies in the region. First, the evidence on the relationship between trade liberalization, macro-restructuring and labor market outcomes during the 1990s is reviewed. Second, labor market rigidities will be analyzed and the extent to which reform efforts facilitated formal employment creation. Finally, based on lessons learned from the 1990s, a new agenda for labor market reform is proposed which reflects more closely the new environment in which Latin American governments now operate. -
Publication
Regional Study on Targeting Systems and Practices : Draft Policy Note
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2010-06-28)This policy note aims to take stock of regional experiences in the area of targeting, both in the context of government systems and the World Bank's operational work, in South Asia. The main objectives are to review targeting systems and practices in the context of government programs; to critically review the role for and impact of targeting in the WB's operational work; and to extract lessons that can be used to deepen the relevance and impact of the WB's operational work in South Asia. The evidence presented in this note will serve as a resource for those interested in and/or planning some work on targeting related work in the region. In this sense, by presenting information on both country systems and performance of WB-led work, the note targets both practitioners and managers. The analysis focuses first on the architecture of targeting systems in South Asia, and on the determinants of targeting effectiveness, including the choice and design of the targeting tool, implementation and monitoring of the targeting tool, and the design, implementation and monitoring of the targeted program. The note concludes that international evidence a large fraction of the observed differences in targeting effectiveness across systems and programs, can be attributed to factors related to implementation and monitoring. This implies that investments aimed at correcting resource, capacity and logistic limitations in government systems could go a long way in improving targeting outcomes in the region. -
Publication
Why So Gloomy?: Perceptions of Economic Mobility in Europe and Central Asia
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-12)Despite significant improvements in per capita expenditures and a marked decline in poverty over the 2000s, a large fraction of Eastern Europe and Central Asias population reports their economic situation in the late 2000s to be worse than in 1989. This paper uses data from the Life in Transition Survey to document the gap between objective and subjective economic mobility and investigate what may drive this apparent disconnection. The paper aims at identifying some of the drivers behind subjective perceptions of economic mobility, focusing on the role of perceptions of fairness and trust in shaping peoples perceptions of their upward or downward mobility. The results show that close to half of the households in the region perceive to have experienced downward economic mobility, that is, that their position in the income distribution has deteriorated. The results also show that perceptions of higher inequality, unfairness, and distrust in public institutions are associated with downward subjective economic mobility. The findings from this study confirm that factors beyond objective well-being are associated with the perceptions of mobility observed in Europe and Central Asia and may explain why the region has had such a pessimistic view of economic mobility during the past two decades. Understanding what drives peoples perceptions of their living standards and quality of life is important, because regardless of objective measures, perceptions could influence peoples behavior, including support for reforms and labor market decisions. For Eastern Europe and Central Asia, a region that has undergone substantive transformations and which is still going through a reform process, accounting for these aspects is critical. -
Publication
Assessing Ex Ante the Poverty and Distributional Impact of the Global Crisis in a Developing Country : A Micro-simulation Approach with Application to Bangladesh
( 2010-03-01)Measuring the poverty and distributional impact of the global crisis for developing countries is not easy, given the multiple channels of impact and the limited availability of real-time data. Commonly-used approaches are of limited use in addressing questions like who are being affected by the crisis and by how much, and who are vulnerable to falling into poverty if the crisis deepens? This paper develops a simple micro-simulation method, modifying models from existing economic literature, to measure the poverty and distributional impact of macroeconomic shocks by linking macro projections with pre-crisis household data. The approach is then applied to Bangladesh to assess the potential impact of the slowdown on poverty and income distribution across different groups and regions. A validation exercise using past data from Bangladesh finds that the model generates projections that compare well with actual estimates from household data. The results can inform the design of crisis monitoring tools and policies in Bangladesh, and also illustrate the kind of analysis that is possible in other developing countries with similar data availability. -
Publication
Assessing Poverty and Distributional Impacts of the Global Crisis in the Philippines : A Microsimulation Approach
( 2010-04-01)As the financial crisis has spread through the world, the lack of real-time data has made it difficult to track its impact in developing countries. This paper uses a micro-simulation approach to assess the poverty and distributional effects of the crisis in the Philippines. The authors find increases in both the level and the depth of aggregate poverty. Income shocks are relatively large in the middle part of the income distribution. They also find that characteristics of people who become poor because of the crisis are different from those of both chronically poor people and the general population. The findings can be useful for policy makers wishing to identify leading monitoring indicators to track the impact of macroeconomic shocks and to design policies that protect vulnerable groups. -
Publication
Knowing, When You Do Not Know : Simulating the Poverty and Distributional Impacts of an Economic Crisis
(World Bank, 2012-01-12)Economists have long sought to predict how macroeconomic shocks will affect individual welfare. Macroeconomic data and forecasts are easily available when crises strike. But policy action requires not only understanding the magnitude of a macro shock, but also identifying which households or individuals are being hurt by (or benefit from) the crisis. Moreover, in many cases, impacts on the ground might be already occurring as macro developments become known, while micro level evidence is still unavailable because of paucity of data. Because of these reasons, a comprehensive real-time understanding of how the aggregate changes will translate to impacts at the micro level remains elusive. This problem is particularly acute when dealing with developing countries where household data is sporadic or out of date. This volume outlines a more comprehensive approach to the problem, showcasing a micro simulation model, developed in response to demand from World Bank staff working in countries and country governments in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008-09. During the growing catastrophe in a few industrialized countries, there was rising concern about how the crisis would affect the developing world and how to respond to it through public policies. World Bank staff s was scrambling to help countries design such policies; this in turn required information on which groups of the population, sectors and regions the crisis would likely affect and to what extent. The volume is organized as follows. Chapter 1 summarizes the methodology underlying the micro simulation model to predict distributional impacts of the crisis, along with several case studies that highlight how the model can be used in different country contexts. Chapters 2 to 4 are written by experts external to the Bank, two of whom participated as discussants at a workshop on the micro simulation work organized in May, 2010 at the World Bank headquarters. Chapter 2 comments on the broader implications and shortcomings of applying the technique described in Chapter 1 and the ability or willingness of governments to respond adequately to its results. Chapter 3 draws parallels between the United States and developing countries to discuss the lessons that can be learned for mitigating the impacts of future crises. Chapter 4 discusses how the micro simulation approach can be sharpened to make it a better tool for distributional analysis moving forward.