Person:
Coulibaly, Souleymane
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Macroeconomic and structural policies,
Growth diagnostics,
Fiscal policy
Degrees
Departments
Central Africa Unit, Africa Region, The World Bank
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
January 31, 2023
Biography
Souleymane Coulibaly, from Cote d'Ivoire, holds a double Ph.D. degree in International Trade and Economic Geography from the University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne (France) and the University of Lausanne (Switzerland). His publications and ongoing research deal with the impact of geography on firms’ location, trade flows and regional integration. He was a co-author of 2009 World Development Report "Reshaping Economic Geography", contributed to the 2005 Global Economic Prospect report on regionalism, and recently published the book “Eurasian Cities: New Realities along the Silk Road” in the ECA regional studies series. He is the Program Leader and Lead Economist for Central Africa. He joined the World Bank Africa Region in January 2014 from the Operation and Policy and Quality Unit (OPCS) where he was covering Development Policy Lending and Guarantee policies and operations, and represented the unit in the Non-Concessional Borrowing Policy committee. Before OPCS, he was in the Eastern and Central Asia (ECA) region working simultaneously as trade economist and country economist of some former Soviet countries (Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan), as well as ECA regional trade coordinator. Before joining the World Bank as a Young Professional in September 2006, he used to be lecturer at the Ecole Nationale Superieure de Statistiques et d’Economie Appliquée (ENSEA) of Abidjan, teaching assistant at the University of Lausanne, and economist at the Economic and International Relations department of NESTLE in Vevey, Switzerland.
Publication Search Results
1 - 7 of 7
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Publication
Rethinking the Form and Function of Cities in Post-Soviet Countries
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-12)Eurasian cities, unique in the global spatial landscape, were part of the world's largest experiment in urban development. The challenges they now face because of their history offer valuable lessons to urban planners and policymakers across the world from places that are still urbanizing to those already urbanized. Today, Eurasian cities must respond to three big changes: the breakup of the Soviet Union, the return of the market as the driving force of society, and the emergence of regional powers such as the European Union, China, and India that are competing with the Russian Federation for markets and influence in its former satellites. Several methods of analysis indicate an imbalance across Eurasia, implying a need to readjust Eurasia's urban structure. National policies in Eurasia are still preoccupied with spatial equity. But the concentration of economic activity in large cities is fundamental to national competitive advantage: they foster innovation through their diversity of industries -- and reduce production costs through their economies of scale. This paper suggests some ideas on how policymakers can harness the economic power of cities to drive national economic development, by focusing on four themes: planning, connecting, greening, and financing cities. -
Publication
Solow in Transition : Macro and Micro Determinants of Savings in Armenia
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-07)This paper analyzes and reconciles macro and micro evidence on savings and factors that affect savings, as well as possible policy implications. At the aggregate level, the main question is how savings are affected by growth and macroeconomic policies and variables (fiscal policy, exchange rate, for example) and the breadth of financial markets. Some of these macro determinants can be reconciled with microeconomic evidence of the savings behavior of households. Using macroeconomic quarterly data and household survey data, the analysis explores the determinants of the savings rate at the macroeconomic and microeconomic levels, using the typical econometric models used in the literature (long-term co-integration relation and short-term error correction model for the macro determinants; linear multivariate models for the micro determinants). The long-term relationship indicates that a 10-percent increase in gross domestic product per capita would add 3.7 percentage points to the savings rate in the long run. The short-term relationship depicts a strong catch-up process to the long-run equilibrium, with quarterly changes in gross domestic product per capita and openness strongly correlated with quarterly changes in the savings rate. The characteristics of households that represent the volatility of expected income, such as education and access to borrowing or remittances, significantly impact saving rates. The macroeconomic and microeconomic analyses of the determinants of saving rates in Armenia point to three policy areas: the macroeconomic environment, the financial sector, and the role of remittances. -
Publication
Cities as Drivers of Growth along the Silk Road
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-01)Major events have reshaped the internal population flows of Eurasia, including the breakup of the Soviet Union, the development of market economies, and the rising influence of regional powers. Looking ahead, policy makers need to promote reforms to make Eurasian cities the main drivers of growth. This can be done by rethinking strategies to better plan, connect, and green the region s important urban centers. Improved planning means promoting policies to develop land and housing markets and enhance public service delivery. Greening Eurasian cities refers to ensuring their sustainable development through strong markets and institutions that encourage the efficient use of resources, address pollution, and build livable cities. To appropriately fund these needed changes, subnational finances will have to be reformed and new ways to finance cross-country connectivity explored. -
Publication
Urbanization and Productivity : Evidence from Turkish Provinces Over the Period 1980-2000
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-08)Since the early 1980s, Turkey has been going through a rapid urbanization process at a pace beyond the World average. This paper aims at assessing the impact of this rapid urbanization process on the country's sector productivity. The authors built a database combining two-digit manufacturing data and some geographical, infrastructural, and socio-economic data collected at the provincial level by the Turkish State Institute of Statistics. The paper develops a parsimonious econometric relation linking sector productivity to accessibility, localization, and urbanization economies, proxying variables in the tradition of the New Economic Geography literature. The estimation results suggest that both localization and urbanization economies, as well as market accessibility, are productivity-enhancing factors in Turkey, although the causation link between productivity and these agglomeration measures is not clearly established. The sector-by-sector estimation confirms this result, although the localization economies effect is negative for the non-oil mineral sector, and the urbanization economies effect is weak for natural-resource-based sectors such as the wood and metal industry. Although the data cover the period up to 2000 and thus ignore the financial crisis that hit Turkey in 2001, the current structural transformation of the country away from the agricultural sector gives room to use the insights of these results as a preliminary step to understand the new challenges faced by the Turkish manufacturing sector. The results provide a discussion base to revisit the policy agenda on the improvement of the accessibility to markets, the improvement of the business environment to ease the creation and development of new firms, and a well-managed urbanization process to tap in the economic potential of cities. -
Publication
Eurasian Cities : New Realities along the Silk Road
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2012-09-07)Eurasian cities, unique in the global spatial landscape, were part of the world's largest experiment in urban development. The challenges they now face because of their history offer valuable lessons to urban planners and policy makers across the world from places that are still urbanizing to those already urbanized. More than three-quarters of the built environment in Eurasian cities was developed after 1945 in a centralized fashion. Central planners could implement whatever they considered good practice planning solutions, and Eurasia's cities became their drawing boards. The central planners got a lot right easy access to public transportation, district heating networks, almost universal access to water systems, and socially integrated neighborhoods. At the same time, they failed to acknowledge the importance of markets and individual choice in shaping sustainable and congenial places for people to live in. From a spatial point of view, it became clear that many Eurasian cities were developed in places where they should not have been. To populate sparsely inhabited territory, Soviet planners pushed urban development toward the heart of Siberia. Many of the resulting cities had no rural hinterland to rely on for daily food needs and had to depend on subsidized goods and services. Many Eurasian cities face an overdeveloped public service infrastructure that is hard to maintain and upgrade. Facing an economic downturn in the 1990s and lacking experience in decentralized urban management, many local authorities struggled to run these services. Public transport ridership fell in most cities, with more people commuting in private vehicles. Recycling networks disappeared, and soaring consumption overwhelmed solid waste management systems. District heating systems became large energy sieves hard to run and maintain without subsidies. Plaguing water systems are large shares of nonrevenue water, and low tariffs do not ensure the cost recovery needed for upgrades and repairs. This book discusses all five of these issues rethinking, planning, connecting, greening, and financing in more detail. It seeks to analyze the key challenges created by central planning, outline how these challenges were addressed in the transition years, and identify some steps Eurasian cities should take to chart a sustainable development path for themselves. The book also shows how some of the most progressive cities in the region have been tackling these problems and, in doing so, shedding the last vestiges of the socialist economy. -
Publication
Shifting Comparative Advantages : Implications for Growth Strategy
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-07)The future development of the Tajik economy will be shaped by its comparative advantage on world markets. Exploiting comparative advantage enables an economy to reap gains from trade. Tajikistan's most important comparative advantage is its hydropower potential, which is far larger than the economy's domestic requirements. Yet, high capital costs of building hydropower plants and the unstable geopolitical situation in the transit region to reach South Asian export markets are constraining the realization of this potential. In the short term, the sector, which provides the greatest opportunity for Tajikistan to diversify its exports, appears to be agro-industry and, to a lesser extent, clothing. For both sectors, the main export market is likely to be the regional market. Tajikistan also has a comparative advantage in labor exports, which it has successfully exploited since the mid-2000s. To harness the full potential for labor exports will require improving the skills base of migrant workers and, in particular, their command of the Russian language. In the medium term, the paper argues that an export diversification strategy should tap the agglomeration economies generated by cities. More specifically, establishing Tajikistan's two leading cities, Dushanbe and Khujand, and their surroundings as enclave economies, linked to each other and to major regional markets through improved transport infrastructure so as to minimize production and transportation costs. The two enclave economies should provide the supporting services (finance, logistics, transport and storage) for private sector businesses. In the long term, regional cooperation on trade and transport facilitation could be pursued to reduce transport costs to attractive regional markets such as China, India, Russia and Turkey. -
Publication
Fiscal Consolidation and Recovery in Armenia
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-02)Armenia's strong economic growth from 2001-2008, when real gross domestic product (GDP) grew 12.6 percent per year on average, boosted living standards and created the fiscal headroom necessary for the Government to respond to the 2009 financial crisis with a large fiscal stimulus. As a result, the fiscal deficit reached 7.6 percent in 2009 and helped limit the contraction in real GDP to 14 percent. With the economy growing again, the stimulus has to be gradually withdrawn. However, the retrenchment will need to be designed carefully to limit negative impact on growth. Improving the efficiency of all aspects of public finances - tax policy, tax administration, and public expenditures - will be crucial to the planned fiscal adjustment. With the ratio of tax revenues to GDP lower than that of comparator countries with similar levels of income per capita, the brunt of the fiscal consolidation should be borne by an increase in tax revenues (the lower bound estimated to be between 2.3 and 5.8 percent of GDP).