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Bennett, Federico

Office of the Chief Economist, Middle East and North Africa
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Bennett, Federico R.
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Office of the Chief Economist, Middle East and North Africa
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Last updated: April 22, 2025
Biography
Federico Bennett is an Economist for the Middle East and North Africa region at the World Bank, a position he assumed in January, 2023. An Argentine national, he previously worked as a Research Analyst in the Office of the Chief Economist for Latin America and the Caribbean where he assisted in the production of a flagship report on regional integration and co-authored multiple semiannual reports. Prior to this, Federico was a Research Fellow at the Integration and Trade sector at the Inter-American Development Bank where he worked with micro-data to evaluate the impact of trade facilitation policies in Costa Rica, Honduras, and Mexico. He also has experience working in management consulting. Federico completed a PhD in economics at Duke University, having specialized in the macroeconomic effects of Knightian uncertainty. He also holds a Master of Arts in Economics from Duke University and a Master of Science in Industrial Engineering from the Instituto Tecnologico de Buenos Aires. Federico’s research has been published in peer reviewed journals, including the Journal of International Economics, on topics related to international trade and macroprudential policy.

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Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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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.
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    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.
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    Altered Destinies: The Long-Term Effects of Rising Prices and Food Insecurity in the Middle East and North Africa
    (Washington, DC : World Bank, 2023-04-06) Gatti, Roberta; Lederman, Daniel; Islam, Asif M.; Andree, Bo, Pieter Johannes; Lotfi, Rana; Mousa, Mennatallah Emam; Bennett, Federico; Assem, Hoda
    Growth is forecasted to slow down for the Middle East and North Africa region. The war in Ukraine in 2022 exacerbated inflationary pressures as the world recovered from the COVID 19 pandemic induced recession. The response by central banks to raise rates to curb inflation is slowing economic activity, while rising food prices are making it difficult for families to put meals on the table. Inflation, when it stems from food prices, hits the poor harder than the rich, thus compounding food insecurity in MENA that had been rising over decades. The immediate effects of food insecurity can be a devastating loss of life, but even temporary increases in food prices can cause long-term irreversible damages, especially to children. The rise in food prices due to the war in Ukraine may have altered the destinies of hundreds of thousands of children in the region, setting them on paths to limited prosperity. Food insecurity imposes challenges to a region where the state of child nutrition and health were inadequate before the shocks from the COVID-19 pandemic. The report discusses policy options and highlights the need for data to guide effective decision making.
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    Leaning Against the Wind: Fiscal Policy in Latin America and the Caribbean in a Historical Perspective
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-04) Bennett, Federico R.; Vegh, Carlos; Lederman, Daniel; Bennett, Federico
    This report by the Office of the Chief Economist for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) of the World Bank studies the region’s fiscal policies. After reviewing LAC’s growth performance, Chapter 1 provides an accounting of its financing needs during the 21st Century to understand how such a diverse region ended up with fiscal deficits across the board in 2016. Chapter 2 goes back to the 1960s and assesses the cyclical properties of fiscal policies. LAC, like most developing countries and in contrast with most developed economies, exhibited procyclical fiscal policies. Good news arrived in the 2000s: one in three economies became countercyclical, which helped improve credit ratings. Yet fiscal policy is complicated by our inability to know if current economic conditions are temporary or permanent. The report argues for a prudent stance that would err on the side of saving too much during upswings and perhaps borrowing too little during downturns.
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    The Big Switch in Latin America: Restoring Growth through Trade
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2016-10-05) Bennett, Federico R.; de la Torre, Augusto; Sasson, Martin; Lederman, Daniel; Ize, Alain; Bennett, Federico
    This report, produced by the Office of the Chief Economist for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) of the World Bank, examines LAC’s challenges as the global economy settles to an equilibrium with lower growth and lower commodity prices. Chapter 1 gives an overview of the world economy and how it affects LAC’s short and medium-term prospects. It argues that LAC suffered an external shock that shaped growth in recent years, and that the current global context is likely here to stay. Many LAC countries experienced significant depreciations which in principle should help adjust to the new equilibrium. The extent to which these depreciations facilitate a soft landing, however, depends on a number of factors. Chapter 2 explores the response of LAC’s trade to the recent depreciations and the role it could play in facilitating a recovery. It examines if there are early signs of an export recovery and whether the region’s increased dependence on commodity exports could hinder LAC’s recovery.
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    The Volatility of International Trade Flows in the 21st Century: Whose Fault Is It Anyway?
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-08) Bennett, Federico; Lederman, Daniel; Pienknagura, Samuel; Rojas, Diego
    After investment, exports and imports are the most volatile components of aggregate demand within countries. Moreover, the volatility of growth and the volatility of trade flows tend to move together; they declined from the 1990s until 2009, followed by an increase since 2009. This paper explores the drivers of such movements in trade-flow volatility. The analysis decomposes trade growth into six components to study their contribution to the overall volatility of trade flows, and presents three findings. First, trade volatility is mostly explained by a factor common to all countries, country-specific factors, and changes in the gravity-related characteristics of a country's trading partners. Product composition and the identity of trading partners appear to be less important in explaining volatility. Second, the pre-2009 decline in volatility and the post-2009 increase in volatility appear to be driven by different factors. The former is mostly explained by a steady decline in the variance of country-specific factors. In contrast, the latter appears to be driven mainly by an increase in the volatility of factors common to all countries. Third, trade diversification is a likely force behind the steady decline in trade volatility driven by country-specific factors, especially in developing countries.