Rijkers, Bob

Person:
Rijkers, Bob

Development Research Group

Author Name Variants

Rijkers, Bob, Rijkers, Bob Martinus Johannes, Rijkers, Bob M.J., Rijkers, Bob M.

Fields of Specialization

Labor economics, Private sector development, Private Sector Development, Trade

Departments

Development Research Group

Last updated:October 6, 2025

Biography

Bob Rijkers is a Senior Economist in the Trade and International Integration Unit of the Development Research Group (DECTI) and professor of Political Economy at Utrecht University. His research interests include state capture, corruption, and the distributional impacts of trade. His research has been published in journals such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Political Economy, Review of Economics and Statistics, Economic Journal, Journal of International Economics, Journal of Human Resources, and the Journal of Development Economics. He holds a BA in Science and Social Sciences from University College Utrecht, Utrecht University and an M.Phil. and D.Phil. in Economics from the University of Oxford.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/10986/38806

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Publication Search Results

Now showing1 - 10 of 54

Promoting Innovative Startups: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Tunisia
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-09) Ali, Nadia; Cali, Massimiliano; Rijkers, Bob
This paper evaluates Tunisia’s “Startup Act,” a policy initiative to foster innovative firms through a “start-up” label and a bundle of incentives, including reduced social security contributions, corporate tax exemptions, easier access to foreign exchange, and simplified customs procedures. Detailed data on the program’s selection process allow identifying marginal entrants and rejects, and hence limit selection on unobservables. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, the program is shown to increase survival and promote job creation. A back-of-the-envelope cost-benefit calculation suggests that the program is cost effective.
Protectionism, Evasion and Household Welfare: Evidence from Nigeria’s Import Bans
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-09-03) Artuc, Erhan; Falcone, Guillermo; Porto, Guido; Rijkers, Bob
This paper analyzes the welfare impacts of import bans in Nigeria and how these impacts are shaped by evasion. Bans were not effectively enforced, thus fostering informal trade. The imposition of bans nonetheless increased consumer prices by 9.9 percent on average. However, price increases were substantially attenuated for goods for which trade policy is harder to enforce. Import bans disproportionately hurt richer households, who likewise disproportionately benefit from evasion
Crops, Conflict and Climate Change
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-01-08) Artuc, Erhan; Porto, Guido; Rijkers, Bob
This paper studies the welfare impacts of agricultural shocks on households with detailed heterogeneity, by taking consumption, land, and labor allocation choices into account. The underlying model is quantified with household survey data from 51 developing countries, then used to analyze the welfare consequences of the food price hikes induced by the Russian Federation's invasion of Ukraine and future climate change. Both repress income and exacerbate inequality. War-induced food inflation reduced real household incomes across developing countries by 2.90 percent on average, while changes in yields due to climate change will reduce real incomes by 11.99 percent. The welfare impacts of both shocks vary enormously across the income distribution, with already vulnerable households bearing the brunt of their costs. Poor households suffer losses that are considerably larger and much more dispersed than those predicted by models that do not feature household heterogeneity and rely exclusively on aggregate data.
Containing Tariff Evasion
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-11-21) Clement, Anne; Chalendard, Cyril; Fernandes, Ana; Rijkers, Bob; Vicard, Vincent
To identify transactions at risk of tariff evasion, this paper matches export transaction data from France with import transaction data from Madagascar using container identifiers. Reporting discrepancies between exporters and importers are prevalent but small, with over two-fifths of importers reporting in a way that increases their tariff liability. Yet, aggregate tariff revenues are 24 percent lower due to discrepancies. These revenue losses are highly concentrated: the top five evaders account for three-quarters of all tariff revenue losses and larger shipments are more at risk of evasion. Tariff enforcement in Madagascar is ineffective and only marginally mitigates revenue losses.
Protectionism and Gender Inequality in Developing Countries
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-08) Artuc, Erhan; Depetris Chauvin, Nicolas; Porto, Guido; Rijkers, Bob
How do tariffs impact gender inequality? Using harmonized household survey and tariff data from 54 low- and middle-income countries, this paper shows that protectionism has an anti-female bias. On average, tariffs repress the real incomes of female headed households by 0.6 percentage points relative to that of male headed ones. Female headed households bear the brunt of tariffs because they derive a smaller share of their income from and spend a larger share of their budget on agricultural products, which are usually subject to high tariffs in developing countries. Consistent with this explanation, the anti-female bias is stronger in countries where female-headed households are underrepresented in agricultural production, are more reliant on remittances, and spend a larger share of their budgets on food than male-headed ones.
Elite Capture of Foreign Aid: Evidence from Offshore Bank Accounts
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-02) Andersen, Jorgen Juel; Johannesen, Niels; Rijkers, Bob
Do elites capture foreign aid? This paper documents that aid disbursements to highly aid-dependent countries coincide with sharp increases in bank deposits in offshore financial centers known for bank secrecy and private wealth management, but not in other financial centers. The estimates are not confounded by contemporaneous shocks such as civil conflicts, natural disasters, and financial crises, and are robust to instrumenting with predetermined aid commitments. The implied leakage rate is around 7.5 percent at the sample mean and tends to increase with the ratio of aid to GDP. The findings are consistent with aid capture in the most aid-dependent countries.
State Capture Analysis: A How to Guide for Practitioners
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-05-17) Raballand, Gael; Rijkers, Bob
This note describes how political economy analysis can be used to promote development, focusing specifically on state capture. It is intended to help practitioners within the World Bank execute and disseminate political economy analysis of state capture. It is not intended to be comprehensive but serves as a how-to guide for those not intimately familiar with the topic.
Transnational Terrorism and the Internet
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-12) Do, Quy-Toan; Gomez-Parra, Nicolas; Rijkers, Bob
Does the internet enable the recruitment of transnational terrorists Using geo-referenced population census data and personnel records from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant—a highly tech-savvy terrorist organization—this paper shows that internet access has facilitated the organization’s recruitment of foreign fighters from Tunisia. The positive association between internet access and Daesh recruitment is robust to controlling for a large set of observable and unobservable confounders as well as instrumenting internet access rates with the incidence of lightning strikes.
Corruption in Customs
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-10) Chalendard, Cyril; Fernandes, Ana M.; Raballand, Gael; Rijkers, Bob
This paper presents a new methodology to detect corruption in customs and applies it to Madagascar’s main port. Manipulation of assignment of import declarations to inspectors is identified by measuring deviations from random assignment prescribed by official rules. Deviant declarations are more at risk of tax evasion, yet less likely to be deemed fraudulent by inspectors, who also clear them faster. An intervention in which inspector assignment was delegated to a third party validates the approach, but also triggered a novel manifestation of manipulation that rejuvenated systemic corruption. Tax revenue losses associated with the corruption scheme are approximately 3 percent of total taxes collected and highly concentrated among a select few inspectors and brokers.
Which Jobs Are Most Vulnerable to COVID-19? What an Analysis of the European Union Reveals
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-05-11) Garrote Sánchez, Daniel; Gomez Parra, Nicolas; Ozden, Caglar; Rijkers, Bob
This Research and Policy Brief presents measures of labor market exposure to COVID-19 (coronavirus)in the European Union (EU) by identifying jobs in non-essential industries that cannot be performed from home. Jobs most at risk account for 30 percent of all EU employment. These jobs are concentrated in lagging regions; tend to be low paid and less secure; and are disproportionately held by young, poorly educated workers and migrants. In the absence of urgent large-scale remedial action, the COVID-19 (coronavirus) is likely to exacerbate preexisting socioeconomic and regional disparities.