Person:
Cruz, Marcio
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Firms,
Entrepreneurship,
Technology Adoption
Degrees
ORCID
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Departments
Finance, Competitiveness, and Innovation Global Practice of the World Bank
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
January 31, 2023
Biography
Marcio Cruz is a Senior Economist in the Finance, Competitiveness, and Innovation Global Practice of the World Bank. Previously, he worked in the Development Economics unit contributing to the World Bank’s flagship publications Global Economic Prospects and Global Monitoring Report. Prior to joining the World Bank, Marcio has worked as a tenured professor in the Department of Economics at the Federal University of Paraná and as an Economist at the Secretary of Planning of the state of Paraná, in Brazil. His main research interests are firm dynamics, technology adoption, international trade, and impact evaluation. His research has been published in scholarly journals such as the Journal of International Economics, the World Development, the Journal of International Inequality, and the Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society. He received the World Bank's Research Academy Award in 2015. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the Graduate Institute, Geneva.
Publication Search Results
1 - 10 of 30
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Publication
Beyond the Income Effect : Impacts of Conditional Cash Transfer Programs on Private Investments in Human Capital
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-05)In the past decade, conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs have become an important component of social policy in developing countries. While the impacts of these programs have been well researched with respect to their effectiveness to achieve intended outcomes, less is known about their impact on private expenditure decisions. This aspect has great policy relevance since changes in private household expenditures can either support or counteract the aim of the programs. This essay investigates the impact of a CCT program on private household expenditure decisions in nutrition, health and education which are seen as principal contributors to child human capital. First, household expenditure behavior under a CCT program is discussed based on Heckman's model on the technology of skill formation as a conceptual framework. The paper shows how intra-household preferences and perceptions on the substitutability or complementarity of investments can impact household resource allocation decisions. Subsequently, the theoretical implications are tested in the context of the Brazilian CCT program Bolsa Família, using the Brazilian household expenditure survey. Evidence is found that households increase their private expenditure in food and education disproportionally to the amount of cash transfer, that is, more than would be expected when considering the Engel curves of the expenditures under question. -
Publication
Do Export Promotion Agencies Promote New Exporters?
(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2014-08)Do export promotion agencies impact the probability of non-exporting firms to export? In the last decade many countries have introduced export promotion agencies to support their firms to deal with asymmetric information problems and make feasible additional gains from trade. Some recent studies have found that the support of these agencies has been effective with respect to the intensive and extensive margins of trade. Nevertheless, because of the lack of information on non-exporting firms, few of them analyze their impact on the probability of promoting new exporters. This paper evaluates the impact of the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency (Apex-Brasil) on firms' export status using a unique firm-level dataset that covers the full manufacturing sector in Brazil. To identify the impact of Apex's assistance on firms' export propensity, the paper relies on a procedure of matching difference-in-difference estimators. The empirical results show evidence of the program's positive impact on the probability of promoting new exporters. The effect is heterogeneous according to firms' size categories and sectors. Furthermore, the findings suggest that the program has spillover effects. Although the evidence of positive effect is robust, the low propensity to export for both the treated and the control groups reinforces the importance of other firms' determinants (for example, productivity), which is widely emphasized by the trade literature. -
Publication
How Significant is Africa's Demographic Dividend for Its Future Growth and Poverty Reduction?
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-12)Africa will be undergoing substantial demographic changes in the coming decades with the rising working age share of its population. The opportunity of African countries to convert these changes into demographic dividends for growth and poverty reduction will depend on several factors. The outlook will likely be good if African countries can continue the gains already made under better institutions and policies, particularly those affecting the productivity of labor, such as educational outcomes. If African countries can continue to build on the hard-won development gains, the demographic dividend could account for 11 to 15 percent of gross domestic product volume growth by 2030, while accounting for 40 to 60 million fewer poor in 2030. The gains can become much more substantial with even better educational outcomes that allow African countries to catch up to other developing countries. If the skill share of Africa's labor supply doubles because of improvements in educational attainment, from 25 to about 50 percent between 2011 and 30, then the demographic dividends can expand the regional economy additionally by 22 percent by 2030 relative to the base case and reduce poverty by an additional 51 million people. -
Publication
Does Input Tariff Reduction Impact Firms Exports in the Presence of Import Tariff Exemption Regimes?
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-04)In the last decade Morocco undertook substantial, if gradual, trade liberalization by reducing tariffs, reforming trade regulations and signing free and preferential trade agreements with several regions and countries, including the United States, Turkey, the European Union and Arab countries. This paper analyzes the impact of input tariff reduction on Moroccan exporting firms through the channel of intermediate goods. Gaining access to more varied and cheaper inputs can make exporting firms more competitive, and as a result they export more. To evaluate how this policy may impact firms export performance, the paper analyzes the impact of input tariff reduction on different margins of trade with emphasis on export markets and product diversification. The identification of the effect of input tariffs on exports relies on a difference-in-difference estimator using heterogeneous access to import tariff exemption as a measure of different levels of exposure to input tariff reduction at the firm level. Overall, the analysis finds that firms that are relatively more exposed to input tariff perform better in those sectors with the largest input tariff reduction, with better access to markets, higher probability to survive when exporting new products in those sectors and higher export value growth. -
Publication
Ending Extreme Poverty and Sharing Prosperity: Progress and Policies
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-10)With 2015 marking the transition from the Millennium to the Sustainable Development Goals, the international community can celebrate many development successes since 2000. Three key challenges stand out: the depth of remaining poverty, the unevenness in shared prosperity, and the persistent disparities in non-income dimensions of development. First, the policy discourse needs to focus more directly on the poorest among the poor. While pockets of ultra-poverty exist around the world, Sub-Saharan Africa is home to most of the deeply poor. To make depth a more central element in policy formulation, easy-to-communicate measures are needed, and this note attempts a step in this direction with person-equivalent measures of poverty. Second, the eradication of poverty in all of its forms requires steady growth of the incomes of the bottom 40 percent. Yet, economic growth, a key driver of shared prosperity, may not be as buoyant as before the global financial crisis. Third, unequal progress in non-income dimensions of development requires addressing widespread inequality of opportunity, which transmits poverty across generations and erodes the pace and sustainability of progress for the bottom 40. To meet these challenges, three ingredients are core to the policy agenda: sustaining broad-based growth, investing in human development, and insuring the poor and vulnerable against emerging risks. -
Publication
Organizing Knowledge to Compete: Impacts of Capacity Building Programs on Firm Organization
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-04)A growing literature aiming at explaining differences across firms in productivity and access to global export markets has focused on the internal organization of firms. This paper contributes to this literature by evaluating the impact of a program that focuses on enhancing competitiveness of small and medium enterprises in Brazil by providing coaching and consulting on management and production practices. Specifically, the paper tests whether the program induces treated firms to reorganize knowledge by adding more layers of different skills and competencies to their workforces. Using a unique firm-level dataset, the number of layers of the firms are compared before and after the program. The impact of the program is identified by relying on an instrumental variable approach, exploiting the quasi-experiment roll-out of its implementation, which was carried out at different times across Brazilian regions. The analysis finds that the program had an effect and that this effect is heterogeneous. The program is particularly effective in promoting the reorganization of firms with initially fewer layers. The results confirm another finding of the literature, namely that in re-organized firms inequality of wages increases, as firms pay higher wages in added higher layers than in pre-existing ones. Finally, these results are used to discuss how the change in firms' organization is positively correlated with export performance. -
Publication
Making the Most of Demographic Change in Southern Africa
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-08)The countries of the Southern African Customs Union have relatively diverse demographic and economic starting points. These economies have the potential to realize demographic dividends and experience an acceleration in their income per capita growth and poverty reduction progress through forthcoming shifts in their age structures. Between 35 and 75 percent of poverty reduction in 2015-50 in Southern African Customs Union economies could be attributed to demographic shifts in a business-as-usual scenario of economic development, if employment rates are at least maintained. The magnitude of the demographic dividends could be greater if countries are able to achieve policy outcomes in parallel in the areas of education, savings-investment, and employment. Scenario analyses of these different policy outcomes interacting with the shifting age structures in different ways suggest quantitatively different economic impacts despite qualitatively similar policies. Improving educational attainment is found to be most important in Lesotho and Swaziland; mobilizing savings for higher investment can be most useful for Botswana; and improving employment rates, especially by closing gender gaps, can be most useful for South Africa and Namibia. -
Publication
On the Impact of Demographic Change on Growth, Savings, and Poverty
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-08)Changing population age structures are shaping the trajectories of development in many countries, bringing opportunities and challenges. While aging has been a matter of concern for upper-middle and high-income economies, rapid population growth is set to continue in the poorest countries over the coming decades. At the same time, these countries will see sustained increases in the working-age shares of their population, and these shifts have the potential to boost growth and reduce poverty. This paper describes the main mechanisms through which demographic change may affect economic outcomes, and estimates the association between changes in the share of working-age population with per capita growth, savings, and poverty rate. An increase of one percentage point in the working-age population share is found to be associated with an increase in gross domestic product per capita growth by more than one percentage point, with similarly positive effects on savings and poverty reduction. -
Publication
Demographic Change and Development: Looking at Challenges and Opportunities through a New Typology
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-11)Demographic change can be a positive contributor to development at any stage of demographic transition. This paper revisits the literature on the determinants and economic impacts of demographic change, and presents a new global typology that classifies countries into four categories based on demographic characteristics and future development potential. In the first group are high-fertility, low-income countries that are lagging in many human development indicators. In the second group are mostly low- and lower-middle-income countries where fertility rates have started falling recently and where changes in age structure offer tremendous opportunity for growth in the near future. The third group comprises mostly upper-middle-income countries that experienced rapid fertility declines in the 1960s, and where working age people will be a shrinking share of the population in the coming decade. The last group is made up of mostly high-income countries that have some of the highest shares of elderly in the world, and below-replacement fertility rates since at least the 1980s. The typology helps identify development policy priorities for countries in different stages of demographic transition, and opportunities through globalization due to demographic differences between countries. -
Publication
Digital Senegal for Inclusive Growth: Technological Transformation for Better and More Jobs
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-02-03)Digital Senegal for Inclusive Growth explores possible solutions for a more intensive use of digital technologies, especially by small and medium enterprises, to increase their productivity and create more quality jobs. The report will contribute to helping women and young people in particular to gain access to decent work and therefore reduce their exposure to poverty. Appropriate use of this report will make it possible to succeed in the challenges of digital transformation, especially in the context of a relatively young population that is more open to innovation and change.