Bussolo, Maurizio

Person:
Bussolo, Maurizio

Office of the Chief Economist for Europe and Central Asia

Fields of Specialization

Income distribution, International trade, Economics of aging, Economics of saving

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Office of the Chief Economist for Europe and Central Asia

Last updated: May 29, 2025

Biography

Maurizio Bussolo, lead economist in the Chief Economist Office for Europe and Central Asia, has been working on quantitative analyses of economic policy and development both in research and operational departments at the World Bank for more than 12 years. He has led operational teams in the aftermath of the 2008-09 crisis negotiating with LAC governments implementation of reforms to shield the most vulnerable. He previously worked at the OECD, at the Overseas Development Institute in London, and at Fedesarrollo and the Los Andes University in Colombia. He has extensively published in peer-reviewed journals on trade, growth, poverty and income distribution, economics of aging, saving and investment. He holds a PhD in economics from the University of Warwick.

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Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 50

From Patriarchy to Policy: Norms, Votes, and Gender Equal Laws
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-29) Bussolo, Maurizio; Rexer, Jonah M.; Hu, Lynn
Legal institutions play an important role in shaping gender equality in economic domains, from inheritance to labor markets. But where do gender equal laws come from? Using cross-country data on social norms and legal equality, this paper investigates the socio-cultural roots of gender inequity in the legal system and its implications for female labor force participation. To identify the impact of social norms, the analysis uses an empirical strategy that exploits pre-modern differences in ancestral patriarchal culture as an instrument for present-day gender norms. The findings show that ancestral patriarchal culture is a strong predictor of contemporary norms, and conservative social norms are associated with more gender inequality in the de jure legal framework, the de facto implementation of laws, and the labor market. The paper presents evidence for a political selection mechanism linking norms to laws: countries with more conservative norms elect political leaders who are more hostile to gender equality, who then pass less progressive legislation. The results highlight the cultural roots and political drivers of legalized gender inequality.
Education, Social Norms, and the Marriage Penalty: Evidence from South Asia
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-16) Bussolo, Maurizio; Rexer, Jonah; Triyana, Margaret
A growing literature attributes gender inequality in labor market outcomes in part to the reduction in female labor supply after childbirth, the child penalty. However, if social norms constrain married women’s activities outside the home, then marriage can independently reduce employment, even in the absence childbearing. Given the correlation in timing between childbirth and marriage, conventional estimates of child penalties will conflate these two effects. The paper studies the marriage penalty in South Asia, a context featuring conservative gender norms and low female labor force participation. The study introduces a split-sample, pseudo-panel approach that allows for the separation of marriage and child penalties even in the absence of individual-level panel data. Marriage reduces women’s labor force participation in South Asia by 12 percentage points, whereas the marginal penalty of childbearing is small. Consistent with the central roles of both opportunity costs and social norms, the marriage penalty is smaller among cohorts with higher education and less conservative gender attitudes.
Growing Vulnerability: What Happened to Europe’s Middle Class in the Course of a Decade ?
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-01-28) Bussolo, Maurizio; Karver, Jonathan; Lokshin, Michael M.; López-Calva, Luis-Felipe; Torre, Iván
This paper uses a vulnerability-based approach to analyze the evolution of the middle class in Europe between 2005–08 and 2015–18. The analysis reveals that, on average, the income level needed to ensure a low probability of falling into poverty—also understood as the vulnerability threshold—increased between those periods in real terms. This increase correlates with decreases in the size of the middle class in many European countries. In parallel, the composition of the middle class changed, with an increased share of tertiary-educated household heads and a larger share of household heads with managerial and professional occupations. Lastly, the households that were not poor, but not yet middle class, were further from becoming middle class in the second period than in the first period.
Inequality of Opportunity and Investment Choices
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-09-19) Brock, J. Michelle; Bussolo, Maurizio
Inequality of opportunity leads to misallocation of human capital and can affect economies via its impact on individual economic decision making. This paper studies the impact of inequality of opportunity on investment, using a laboratory experiment. The experiment randomized inequality of opportunity, then subjects chose to invest in a risky asset or savings. The results suggest that inequality of opportunity impacts investment choices only for people who are penalized by their circumstances and only once they learn the impact of inequality of opportunity on their relative position in the income distribution. This disadvantaged group invests more often and invests higher shares of their earnings than the control and advantaged groups. The fact that both inequality of opportunity and knowledge of relative position need to be present for the impact on investment to materialize points to the importance of peer effects. More broadly, the paper highlights the relevance of social preferences for understanding the effects of inequality of opportunity on individual decision making.
(Perceptions of) Inequality, Demand for Redistribution, and Group-Specific Public Goods: A Survey Experiment in India
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-07-18) Dixit, Akshay; Bussolo, Maurizio
This paper uses data from a survey of 116,061 households in India to study people’s beliefs about inequality and demand for redistribution. The findings show that a household’s beliefs about inequality, implied by the perception of their position on the income distribution, is negatively correlated with support for reducing inequality. This is relevant since there are significant differences between where individuals believe their household stands and their actual position, with the gap between perceived and actual position exceeding two deciles on average. Despite these large differences, informing individuals of their household’s position on the income distribution has no discernible effect on support for reducing inequality. The paper posits that demand for redistribution may be unresponsive to this information because it is based on exclusively on household’s income and does not account for the sharing of resources within communities. In communities where group-specific public goods, such as religious and social goods, are present, class antagonism and redistribution are mitigated by community solidarity. Households benefit from these goods, and such benefits alter the individuals’ beliefs of inequality. Consistent with this prediction, the average individual perceives their household as richer in districts with a greater supply of religious or social goods. The sharing of resources within religious or ethnic groups can shape perceptions of the income distribution and reduce support for redistribution within these groups, and thus requires serious consideration in studies of inequality.
Explaining the Evolution of Job Tenure in Europe, 1995–2020
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-10) Capelle, Damien; Bussolo, Maurizio; Lokshin, Michael M.; Torre, Iván; Winkler, Hernan
During the last quarter century, job tenure in Europe has shortened. Using data from Eurostat Labor Force Surveys of 29 countries from 1995 to 2020 and applying an age-period-cohort decomposition to analyze changes in tenure for specific birth cohorts, this paper shows that tenure has shrunk for cohorts born in more recent years. To account for compositional changes within cohorts, the analysis estimates the probability of holding jobs of different durations, conditional on individual and employment-related characteristics. The estimations demonstrate that, over time, the likelihood of having a medium- or long-term job decreased and holding a short-term job increased. The paper also finds that stricter job protection legislation appears to decrease the probability of holding a short-term job, and higher trade openness and ICT-related technological change are correlated with an increase of that probability.
Job Tenure and Structural Change in the Transition Economies of Europe
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-10) Oviedo, Nicolás; Bussolo, Maurizio; Lokshin, Michael M.; Torre, Iván
This paper uses labor force survey data for 1995–2020 to analyze the dynamics of job tenure in seven transition economies of Europe and a comparator country (Türkiye). The country-specific age-period-cohort decomposition demonstrates that, except in Albania, the job tenure of the cohort of workers entering the labor market in the 2000s is four to nine years shorter than that of workers who started working in the 1970s. This difference is at least twice as large as the difference in job tenure observed among workers from the same cohorts in European Union countries. These trends in tenure persist after accounting for changes in cohort composition, but they are significantly attenuated by controlling for differences in individual worker characteristics. These results suggest that the evolution of tenure in the transition economies of Europe is still driven mainly by the transition-induced structural change processes in the labor market.
Social Norms and Gender Equality: A Descriptive Analysis for South Asia
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-08) Ezebuihe, Jessy Amarachi; Bussolo, Maurizio; Munoz Boudet, Ana Maria; Poupakis, Stavros; Rahman, Tasmia; Sarma, Nayantara
Despite decades of economic growth, gender inequality in South Asia remains remarkably high. Although not the only one, social norms are a crucial driver of various gender outcomes, including differential economic participation. Using repeated cross-sectional data from nationally representative surveys, this paper explores the long term trends of gender outcomes and social norms (proxied by attitudes towards gender roles) in South Asia. The results corroborate the evidence that there has been almost no progress in gender equality in South Asia over the past half-century. There has been little progress on female labor force participation, marriage age, agency, intimate partner violence, and preference for sons, with education being the only exception. The lack of progress is apparent among all socioeconomic groups, including women who live in urban areas, are educated, and have higher incomes. Gender attitudes also remain unchanged, and in some cases, have become more conservative and have a negative relationship with gender outcomes. Better measurements of social norms and better understanding of how their constraining role can be loosened may be critical for achieving gender equality in the region.
Indirect Effects of COVID-19 Nonpharmaceutical Interventions on Vaccine Acceptance
(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2022-06) Bussolo, Maurizio; Torre, Iván
The information set from which individuals make their decision on vaccination includes signals from trusted agents, such as governments, community leaders, and the media. By implementing restrictions, or by relaxing them, governments can provide a signal about the underlying risk of the pandemic and indirectly affect vaccination take-up. Rather than focusing on measures specifically designed to increase vaccine acceptance, this paper studies how governments’ nonpharmaceutical policy responses to the pandemic can modify the degree of preventive health behavior, including vaccination. To do so, the paper uses repeated waves of a global survey on COVID-19 beliefs, behaviors, and norms covering 67 countries from August 2020 to February 2021. Controlling for the usual determinants, the analysis explores how individuals’ willingness to get vaccinated is affected by changes in government restriction measures (as measured by the Oxford Stringency Index). This relationship is mediated by individual characteristics, social norms (social pressure to conform with what most people do), and trust in government institutions. The results point to a complex picture as the implementation of restrictions is associated with increased acceptance in some contexts and decreased acceptance in others. The stringency of government restrictions has significant positive correlations with vaccine acceptance in contexts of weak social norms of vaccine acceptance and lower trust in government. In countries or communities where social norms are tighter and trust in government health authorities is high, vaccine acceptance is high but less sensitive to changes in policies. These results suggest that the indirect effect of government policy stringency is stronger among individuals who report lower trust and weaker social norms of vaccine acceptance.
It Takes Two (To Make Things Right): Women's Empowerment and Couple Concordance in South Asia
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-02) Sarma, Nayantara; Bussolo, Maurizio; Williams, Anaise
This paper empirically assesses the relevance of women’s agency for family health and domestic violence outcomes in South Asia. It discerns three forms of agency by considering how decisions are taken within the household and highlights differences in the intensity of the correlation between these forms of agency and household members’ well-being. Decision-making reports are matched by both spouses and classified as: (i) the wife participates in decisions, and both husband and wife agree about her role; (ii) the wife reports participating in decisions, but the husband does not recognize her role, that is, she takes power; and (iii) the husband reports that the wife participates in decisions, but the wife does not, that is, he gives power. Using cross-sectional data from six South Asian countries, the paper finds that the association between all forms of women’s agency and the health of their children is statistically significant and economically meaningful. In the cases of being underweight, used prenatal help, and modern use of contraception, and especially in the case of domestic violence, the spousal agreement variant of women’s agency has stronger beneficial correlations vis-à-vis the taking power or giving power variants. The paper emphasizes the importance of spousal support and the contextual component of women’s agency in South Asia, where social norms mediate women’s decision making and outcomes.