Person: Redaelli, Silvia
Poverty and Equity Global Practice, World Bank
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Redaelli, Silvia
Fields of Specialization
Poverty, Inequality, Labor markets, Conflict and fragility
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Poverty and Equity Global Practice, World Bank
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Last updated:November 18, 2024
Biography
Silvia Redaelli is a senior economist with the Poverty and Equity Global Practice at the World Bank, where her work focuses on the analysis of poverty, inequality, and labor markets. Silvia’s research interests lie in the topics of migration, conflict and inequality.
Silvia is currently leading the poverty team in the Pakistan country office and previously held similar positions in Afghanistan and Maldives. Her work has been published in academic journals such as American Economic Journal: Applied Economics and World Development.
Silvia holds a PhD in economics from Bocconi University and a MSc in economics from London School of Economics.
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Publication Afghanistan’s New Economic Landscape: Using Nighttime Lights to Understand the Civilian Economy after 2021(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-11-18) Barriga Cabanillas, Oscar; Kosmidou-Bradley, Walker; Redaelli, Silvia; Tateishi, Eigo; Teruggi, IvoThis study uses nighttime lights to examine the evolution of economic activity in Afghanistan after the August 2021 regime change. A year later, nighttime luminosity had dropped by 20 percent, with two-thirds of this decline tied to the pre-planned international military withdrawal. To focus on local economic activity, the study filters out light emissions from foreign military installations, which accounted for up to 30 percent of lights over the past decade. Using civilian nighttime lights to understand the new economic reality in the country indicates a significant economic recovery concentrated in previously conflict-affected regions. By 2023/24, civilian luminosity had surpassed pre-2020/21 levels by 10.5 percent while, in contrast, official gross domestic product indicates an economy that is one-quarter smaller. The findings highlight changes in economic dynamics, including increased informality, shifts in the geographic distribution of activity, and improved security post-Taliban takeover.Publication Price Adjustments and Poverty Measurement(World Bank, 2023-05-01) Amendola, Nicola; Mancini, Guilia; Redaelli, Silvia; Vecchi, GiovanniMeasuring poverty entails making interpersonal welfare comparisons, that should account for differences in prices faced by households, both over time and across space. This paper investigates the impact of seemingly minor differences in the practical implementation of price adjustments, by developing an analytical framework that is consistent with standard consumer theory and mindful of the data limitations faced by practitioners. The main result is at odds with common sense: even when multiple price indexes are available, say a food and a nonfood Consumer Price Index, it turns out that using a single price index, the total Consumer Price Index, to adjust the consumption aggregate is recommended. The practice of adjusting the components of the consumption aggregate separately, using matching deflators—food expenditure with the food index and nonfood expenditure with the nonfood index—can lead to a systematic bias in the welfare measure, and consequently in poverty and inequality measures. The direction of the bias can be easily predicted based on the price level and household consumption patterns. On the interplay between spatial and temporal deflation, the findings show that temporal deflation should be carried out before implementing adjustments to spatial cost-of-living differences. The paper illustrates these findings using the Islamic Republic of Iran’s 2019 Household Income and Expenditure survey: the bias in the headcount poverty rate due to incorrect deflation is substantive (5–10 percent for estimates at the national level, 15–20 percent in urban and rural areas, and more than 30 percent for district-level headcount rates). Higher-order Foster-Greer-Thorbecke poverty measures are even more affected.Publication The Gendered Impact of the COVID-19 Crisis on the Iranian Labor Market(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-02-15) Redaelli, SilviaDespite sizable government interventions to sustain the economy, in the first year of the pandemic (2021/22), approximately 1 million jobs were lost in the Islamic Republic of Iran, and labor force participation contracted by 3 percentage points. Iranian women were the most affected: two out of three jobs lost between 2019/20 and 2020/21 were previously held by women. The gendered impact of the crisis contributed to widening Iranian women’s disadvantage in the labor market. Most importantly, the gains in female labor force participation that had slowly accumulated since 2011 vanished. Consistent with what is observed in other countries, women with young children were the most affected by the crisis. The combined effect of school closures and unequal intra-household allocation of care responsibilities, associated with prevailing gender norms, pushed Iranian women with children out of the labor force. Whether or not these trends will be reversed as the management of the COVID-19 pandemic is normalized and the economy recovers from the crisis remains an important policy question.Publication Fair Progress?: Economic Mobility Across Generations Around the World(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2018-05-09) Narayan, Ambar; Van der Weide, Roy; Cojocaru, Alexandru; Lakner, Christoph; Redaelli, Silvia; Mahler, Daniel Gerszon; Ramasubbaiah, Rakesh Gupta N.; Thewissen, StefanFair Progress? Economic Mobility Across Generations Around the World looks at an issue that has gotten much attention in the developed world, but with, for the first time, new data and analysis covering most of the world, including developing economies. The analysis examines whether those born in poverty or in prosperity are destined to remain in the same economic circumstances into which they were born, and looks back over a half a century at whether children’s lives are better or worse than their parents’ in different parts of the world. It suggests local, national, and global actions and policies that can help break the cycle of poverty, paving the way for the next generation to realize their potential and improve their lives.Publication Pakistan at 100: From Poverty to Equity(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-03) Redaelli, SilviaThis policy note was prepared in parallel to the report Pakistan at 100 – Shaping the Future. The report Pakistan at 100 discusses options to accelerate and sustain growth in Pakistan so that the country becomes an upper middle-income country when it turns 100 years old in 2047. This policy note discusses inequality of opportunities women face in Pakistan. Excluding women from the labor force means that a large share of Pakistan’s greatest asset, its population, is being wasted.Publication Determinants of International Emergency Aid : Humanitarian Need Only?(2009-02-01) Fink, Guenther; Redaelli, SilviaThe authors use an original data set covering more than 400 recent natural disasters to analyze the determinants of international emergency aid. Although humanitarian need is a major determinant of emergency relief payments, the results imply that political and strategic factors play a crucial role in the emergency aid allocation. On average, donor governments favor smaller, geographically closer, and oil exporting countries, and display significant biases in favor of politically less aligned countries as well as toward their former colonies. The authors also test and reject the independence of donors' aid decisions, finding strong evidence for bandwagon effects in humanitarian assistance.Publication Determinants of International Emergency Aid--Humanitarian Need Only?(2011) Fink, Gunther; Redaelli, SilviaWe use an original data set covering 270 natural disasters to analyze the determinants of international emergency aid. Although humanitarian need appears to be a major determinant of emergency relief payments, our results suggest that political and strategic factors play a crucial role in emergency aid allocation as well. On average, donor governments favor smaller, geographically closer and oil exporting countries, and display significant biases in favor of politically less aligned countries as well as toward their former colonies. We also test and reject the independence of donors' aid decisions, finding strong evidence for bandwagon effects in humanitarian assistance.