Rijkers, Bob

Person:
Rijkers, Bob

Development Research Group

Fields of Specialization

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

Departments

Development Research Group

Last updated: May 9, 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.

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Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 52

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Does Better Information Curb Customs Fraud?
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-05) Chalendard, Cyril; Duhaut, Alice; Fernandes, Ana M.; Raballand, Gael; Rijkers, Bob; Mattoo, Aaditya
This paper examines how providing better information to customs inspectors and monitoring their actions affects tax revenue and fraud detection in Madagascar. First, an instrumental variables strategy is used to show that transaction-specific, third-party valuation advice on a subset of high-risk import declarations increases fraud findings by 21.7 percentage points and tax collection by 5.2 percentage points. Second, a randomized control trial is conducted in which a subset of high-risk declarations is selected to receive detailed risk comments and another subset is explicitly tagged for ex-post monitoring. For declarations not subject to third-party valuation advice, detailed comments increase reporting of fraud by 3.1 percentage points and improve tax yield by 1 percentage point. However, valuation advice and detailed comments have a significantly smaller impact on revenue when potential tax losses and opportunities for graft are large. Monitoring induces inspectors to scan more shipments but does not result in the detection of more fraud or the collection of additional revenue. Better information thus helps curb customs fraud, but its effectiveness appears compromised by corruption.
Toward Successful Development Policies: Insights from Research in Development Economics
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-01) Artuc, Erhan; Cull, Robert; Dasgupta, Susmita; Fattal, Roberto; Filmer, Deon; Gine, Xavier; Jacoby, Hanan; Jolliffe, Dean; Kee, Hiau Looi; Klapper, Leora; Kraay, Aart; Loayza, Norman; Mckenzie, David; Ozler, Berk; Rao, Vijayendra; Rijkers, Bob; Schmukler, Sergio L.; Toman, Michael; Wagstaff, Adam; Woolcock, Michael
What major insights have emerged from development economics in the past decade, and how do they matter for the World Bank? This challenging question was recently posed by World Bank Group President David Malpass to the staff of the Development Research Group. This paper assembles a set of 13 short, nontechnical briefing notes prepared in response to this request, summarizing a selection of major insights in development economics in the past decade. The notes synthesize evidence from recent research on how policies should be designed, implemented, and evaluated, and provide illustrations of what works and what does not in selected policy areas.