doi:https://doi.org/10.1596/41311

Person:
Mele, Gianluca

Equitable Growth, Finance and Institutions (EFI) Practice Group, World Bank

Last updated: April 22, 2025

Biography

Gianluca Mele is the Lead Economist and Program Leader for West Bank and Gaza, in the World Bank’s Equitable Growth, Finance and Institutions (EFI) Practice Group. In his current function, he contributes to the management and implementation of an active project portfolio exceeding US$600m/year in the Palestinian territories, and provides strategic direction and technical oversight to specialists engaged on macro-fiscal analysis, trade and competitiveness, finance, poverty, governance, and procurement. Prior to this position, he worked as an economic adviser to the former Chief Executive Officer and the Managing Director of Operations of the World Bank. Previously, as a senior economist in charge of various countries in the MENA, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Africa Regions, he worked on policy reforms in the area of growth and competitiveness, tax expenditures and public spending efficiency, debt sustainability, and on empirical research on wealth accounting and natural resource management. He has authored numerous papers, books and diagnostics published by the World Bank, the United Nations (UN), and peer reviewed journals including the Eurasian Economic Review. He joined the World Bank in 2011, and received a Ph.D. in Economics and Statistics from his hometown’s University (Salerno, Italy) and a master’s degree in international Affairs by LUISS University (Rome, Italy).

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Publication Search Results

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Shifting Gears: The Private Sector as an Engine of Growth in the Middle East and North Africa
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-04-23) Gatti, Roberta; Onder, Harun; Islam, Asif M.; Torres, Jesica; Mele, Gianluca; Bennett, Federico; Chun, Sumin; Lotfi, Rana; Suvanov, Ilias
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is estimated to have grown at a modest rate of 1.9 percent in 2024 and is expected to grow moderately at 2.6 percent in 2025. This is against a backdrop of increased global uncertainty, particularly in trade policy. The region is far from the frontier in standards of living, largely due to low productivity. This issue of the MENA Economic Update sheds light on a critical engine of productivity growth: the private sector. Businesses create jobs, boost livelihoods, and serve as a bastion of innovation in the economy. The MENA private sector, however, is not dynamic and is ill prepared to absorb shocks. To boost the performance of the private sector, governments in the region may need to rethink their role in engaging with markets including improving competition, the business environment, and the availability of data. Additionally, private sector businesses in the region can increase performance through better management practices and harnessing untapped talent in the region.
Growth in the Middle East and North Africa
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-16) Gatti, Roberta; Torres, Jesica; Elmallakh, Nelly; Mele, Gianluca; Faurès, Diego; Mousa, Mennatallah Emam; Suvanov, Ilias
This issue of the MENA Economic Update presents a summary of recent macroeconomic trends, including an update of the conflict centered in Gaza and its regional spillovers, alongside an analysis of factors that shape the long-term growth potential of the region, with special attention to the persistent effects of conflicts. A modest uptick in growth is forecast for 2024, which nonetheless masks important disparities within the region. The acceleration is driven by the high-income oil exporters, while growth is expected to decelerate among developing MENA countries, both developing oil exporters and developing oil importers. Despite current challenges, the region can dramatically boost growth by better allocating talent in the labor market, leveraging its strategic location, and promoting innovation. Closing the gender employment gap, rethinking the footprint of the public sector, and facilitating technology transfers through trade under enhanced data quality and transparency can help the region leap toward the frontier. Peace is a pre-condition for catching up to the frontier, as conflict can undo decades of progress, delaying economic development by generations.
Conflict and Debt in the Middle East and North Africa
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-04-15) Gatti, Roberta; Bennett, Federico; Assem, Hoda; Lotfi, Rana; Mele, Gianluca; Suvanov, Ilias; Islam, Asif M.
The global economy is in its third year of deceleration amidst declining inflation and oil prices. The MENA region grew at 1.9 percent in 2023 and is forecasted to grow at 2.7 percent in 2024. And for the first time since the pandemic, MENA oil exporters and importers will grow at similar rates. The tragedy of the conflict in the Middle East has increased uncertainty. Rising debt leaves many countries in the region exposed. This report unpacks the nature of debt in the region. Oil importers have been unable to either inflate or grow out of debt. Exchange rate fluctuations, and particularly stock flow adjustments (SFA) play a sizeable role. The report highlights the need to address debt transparency. Extrabudgetary items, especially for developing oil importers, need to be accounted for. Primary balances are key, but only to the extent that they capture the true state of government finances.
Alternative Paths for Yemen up to 2030: A CGE-Based Simulation Analysis
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-11-08) Lofgren, Hans; Cicowiez, Martín; Mele, Gianluca
Over nine years of violence and conflict have profoundly altered the Republic of Yemen’s economy. The war has shattered the country’s already fragile socioeconomic equilibria, affecting nearly every facet of life. Since the onset of the conflict, economic diagnostics have focused on descriptions of the deteriorating macro-fiscal and poverty conditions, lack of food security, and loss of capital accumulation. However, relatively little attention has gone toward the development of a forward-looking vision for the country, rooted in Yemen’s current economic structure. This paper helps to fill this gap by presenting and analyzing a set of scenarios for Yemen’s economy up to 2030. The analysis is based on a new version of the Sustainable Development Goal Simulation model, a dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model, which is applied to a new social accounting matrix (SAM) for Yemen. The new social accounting matrix has the virtue of consolidating sparce and often inconsistent Yemeni data from multiple sources (the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the United Nations system) into a coherent framework that reflects the basic structure of the economy, both at the macro and sectoral levels. The simulation analysis is built around three broad scenarios spanning 2022 through 2030. The results suggest that if the conflict subsides, governance is strengthened, and the donor community provides crucial aid, considerable progress, including reduced poverty rates and improved living conditions, can be achieved by 2030. Given Yemen’s low levels of infrastructure and human development, the potential payoffs from investments in these areas are great.
Fiscal Incentives and Firm Performance: Evidence from the Dominican Republic
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-03) Amendola, Alessandra; Boccia, Marinella; Sensini, Luca; Mele, Gianluca
This paper evaluates the impact of fiscal incentives on firm performance in the Dominican Republic. In recent years, the Dominican government has approved several new corporate tax benefits. While the literature on value-added tax incentives is extensive, the impact of corporate tax incentives is less well studied and is the subject of an ongoing debate. Using firm-level panel data from 2006 to 2015, this analysis uses fixed- and random-effects models to examine the relationship between corporate tax incentives and selected firm-level performance indicators. The results reveal that corporate income tax exemptions positively impact the performance of individual firms in the Dominican Republic, but uneven tax treatment across firms distorts competition in the industrial sector, with negative effects on overall economic productivity.
Mauritania : Counting on Natural Wealth for a Sustainable Future
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-05) Mele, Gianluca
A data set of key macro-sustainability indicators, constructed after several fact-finding missions, and World Bank methodologies on estimating wealth accounting are used to study Mauritania's wealth, which is estimated to be between USD50 and USD60 billion. The country's produced wealth represents roughly 12 percent of total wealth, much less than in lower-middle-income countries; by contrast, natural wealth represents approximately 45 percent of the total figure. Renewable resources account for slightly less than two-thirds of natural wealth, with fisheries alone equaling about one-fourth of natural wealth. This is good news for Mauritania, as sound management of these resources may ensure a constant flow of resources in the future and therefore -- with adequate policies -- the achievement of the same or higher levels of welfare for future generations. On the negative side, however, the ratio of net adjusted savings over gross national income is estimated to have been negative since 2006, meaning that the wealth of the country is being depleted. Mauritania has recently joined the ranks of lower-middle-income countries, largely thanks to its considerable natural resources endowment. Over time the mining sector's contribution to gross domestic product has grown significantly and important discoveries continue to be made. The overarching objective of this wealth accounting exercise is thus to support Mauritania to measure its assets better and achieve a more complete picture of the prospects for future income, with a view to better orienting public policies toward sustainable growth and shared prosperity. The paper concludes with several indicative policy recommendations.
Nonrenewable Resources, Income Inequality and Per Capita GDP: An Empirical Analysis
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-09) Scognamillo, Antonio; Sensini, Luca; Mele, Gianluca
This analysis examines the relationship between nonrenewable resource dependence, economic growth and income inequality. It uses a two-equation system in which the Gini index and GDP per capita are the dependent variables and the stock of nonrenewable resources as a share of national wealth -- i.e. resource dependence -- is the independent variable. Using a dataset that includes information on 43 countries from 1980 to 2012, this paper estimates several model specifications in order to check the robustness of the results under different assumptions and to account for income-group-related heterogeneity among countries. The baseline model provides strong evidence that natural resource dependence is negatively correlated with both per capita GDP and the Gini index; in other words, resource dependence is associated with lower income levels, but also with a more equal distribution of income. Interestingly, however, after controlling for country income group, the sign and magnitude of these relationships appear to become dependent on national-level structural characteristics. Among higher-income countries, greater nonrenewable natural resource dependence is associated with lower income inequality, while there is no statistically significant correlation with GDP per capita. Among the lower-income group, greater dependence on nonrenewable natural resources is associated with both higher levels of income inequality and lower per capita GDP. Further analysis focusing on a subsample of non-renewable resource rich countries confirms these findings.
Financial Access and Household Welfare: Evidence from Mauritania
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-01) Amendola, Alessandra; Boccia, Marinella; Sensini, Luca; Mele, Gianluca
This paper evaluates the impact of access to credit from banks and other financial institutions on household welfare in Mauritania. Micro-level data from a 2014 household survey are used to evaluate the relationship between credit access, a range of household characteristics, and welfare indicators. To address potential endogeneity issues, the household isolation level is used to instrument access to credit. The results show that households headed by older, more educated people are more likely to access financial services, as are households located in urban areas. In addition, greater financial access appears to be associated with a reduced dependence on household production and increased investment in human capital.
Mauritania Economic Update, July 2014
(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2014-07) Mele, Gianluca
Real gross domestic product (GDP) expanded by 6.7 percent in 2013, a modest deceleration from the 7 percent recorded in the previous year, but well above the average 4.9 percent rate of growth recorded over the last ten years. The economy benefited from strong growth in the agriculture (rebounding from last year's drought), mining and services sectors, which largely offset weaker activity in fishing activity. A continuation of these relatively robust growth conditions is anticipated over the next three years, as the economy benefits from a continued expansion of mining output, particularly of iron ore. In 2015 the largest contributions to growth are projected to come from trade, livestock and iron, although the fast growing sub-sectors are expected to be copper, gold and manufacturing. Following the macroeconomic analysis (section B) this economic update includes a section on partnership agreements and sectoral developments (section C), as well as two special sections on inclusive growth, wealth accounting (section D), economic diversification and efficiency in natural resource use (section E). Section F concludes the document with some indicative policy recommendations.
Assessing Public Debt Sustainability in Mauritania with a Stochastic Framework
(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2014-11) Baghdassarian, William; Pradelli, Juan; Mele, Gianluca
This work presents a stochastic framework for assessing public debt sustainability and applies it to the case of Mauritania. The sustainability assessment projects solvency and liquidity indicators -- public debt stock and gross financing needs relative to GDP -- for 2014-23. The analysis uses deterministic scenarios and stochastic simulations to analyze policy options and fiscal risks. The study relies on simple econometric models to generate forecasts of key macroeconomic variables driving the public debt dynamics and to compute debt-distress probabilities and debt thresholds. The study builds on basic techniques to determine optimal portfolios suitable as benchmarks for public debt management. A main result is that, if Mauritania maintains a strong growth performance and pursues sound policies to balance the budget and take advantage of concessional financing opportunities, it could reduce the public debt from 74 percent of GDP in 2013 to 30 percent by 2023, and the gross financing needs from 12 percent of GDP to 4 percent. Further scaling up capital spending is likely to deteriorate public debt sustainability because the estimated (marginal) growth-dividend is small. A more promising avenue would be to improve the quality of public investment and institutions, as opposed to the volume of capital expenditure. Different debt strategies can significantly affect the liquidity needs and the on-budget interest bill. But it is the fiscal policy geared toward balanced budgets that ultimately would permit Mauritania to improve the solvency indicators, and thus the public debt sustainability.