Person:
Olivieri, Sergio

Global Practice on Poverty, The World Bank
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Fields of Specialization
Poverty and growth, Poverty measurement, Distributional impact of shocks, Labor informality, Inequality, Social Protection and Labor
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Global Practice on Poverty, The World Bank
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Last updated: July 12, 2023
Biography
Sergio Olivieri is an economist in the Poverty Reduction and Equity department of the World Bank, based in Washington, DC.  His main research areas are ex-ante analysis of the distributional impact of macroeconomic shocks, understanding the main channels through which economic growth affects poverty reduction, income distribution and multidimensional poverty. Olivieri has published articles about labor informality, polarization, mobility and inequality issues, most of them focused on Latin-American countries. He has also contributed to research reports on inequality, poverty, social cohesion and macroeconomic shocks. Before joining the Bank, Olivieri worked as a consultant for the Inter-American Development Bank, the United Nation Development Program and the European Commission. He has taught courses on micro-simulation and micro-decomposition techniques for public servants and staff in international organizations around the world. He has also worked as an assistant professor of labor economics in the Department of Economics of Universidad National de La Plata in Buenos Aires, and as a researcher in the university's Center of Distributional, Labor and Social Studies.
Citations 5 Scopus

Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
  • Publication
    Jobs Interrupted: The Effects of COVID-19 in the LAC Labor Markets
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-05) Mejia-Mantilla, Carolina; Olivieri, Sergio; Rivadeneira, Ana; Lara Ibarra, Gabriel; Romero, Javier
    Given the importance of labor income in the region, there are several important questions about the effects of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on the labor market. At the outset of the pandemic, 48 percent of Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) workers stopped working and 16 percent lost their job. Yet, were job losses similar for all workers? Has the COVID-19 shock exacerbated unfavorable labor market conditions for vulnerable groups over time? What happened to those workers who remained employed throughout the early months of the pandemic? And, what lessons can be drawn from the experience? This note sheds light on these inquiries using household data from the LAC high-frequency phone surveys (HFPS) which were collected between May and August of 2020 from 13 countries in the region.
  • Publication
    Shoring Up Economic Refugees: Venezuelan Migrants in the Ecuadoran Labor Market
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-07) Ortega, Francesc; Olivieri, Sergio; Rivadeneira, Ana; Carranza, Eliana
    Ecuador became the third largest receiver of the 4.3 million Venezuelans who left their country in the last five years, hosting around 10 percent of them. Little is known about the characteristics of these migrants and their labor market outcomes. This paper fills this gap by analyzing a new large survey (EPEC). On average, Venezuelan workers are highly skilled and have high rates of employment, compared with Ecuadorans. However, their employment is of much lower quality, characterized by low wages and high rates of informality and temporality. Venezuelans have experienced significant occupational downgrading, relative to their employment prior to emigration. As a result, despite their high educational attainment, Venezuelans primarily compete for jobs with the least skilled and more economically vulnerable Ecuadoran workers. Our simulations suggest that measures that allow Venezuelans to obtain employment that matches their skills, such as facilitating the conversion of education credentials, would increase Ecuador's GDP between 1.6 and 1.9 percent and alleviate the pressure on disadvantaged native workers. We also show that providing work permits to Venezuelan workers would substantially reduce their rates of informality and increase their average earnings.
  • Publication
    COVID-19 in LAC: High Frequency Phone Surveys - Technical Note
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-04) Mejía-Mantilla, Carolina; Olivieri, Sergio; Rivadeneira, Ana; Lara Ibarra, Gabriel; Romero, Javier
    Latin American and the Caribbean is one of the regions in the world most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the welfare impacts for households have been severe. At the macroeconomic level, the World Bank estimates a contraction of 6.9 percent of the region’s GDP in 2020, due to pandemic-control measures and the deceleration of the global economy (World Bank, 2021). Regional export prices significantly dropped in the first semester of 2020 (5.2 percent) (Inter-American Development Bank, 2020), and although they began to recover in the second half of the year, the volume of goods-exports dropped by 8 points by the third quarter of 2020 (World Bank, 2021).
  • Publication
    The Labor Market Effects of Venezuelan Migration in Ecuador
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-07) Ortega, Francesc; Olivieri, Sergio; Carranza, Eliana; Rivadeneira, Ana
    As of 2019, more than 1.2 million Venezuelans passed through Ecuador and more than 400,000 settled (almost 3 percent of Ecuador's population). This paper analyzes the location choices of Venezuelan migrants in Ecuador and the labor market consequences of these choices, using data from Ecuador's labor force survey and mobile phone records on the geographic distribution of Venezuelan migrants. Around half of the migrants live in four cantons (of 221). Their location is primarily driven by local economic conditions, rather than point of entry. Overall, the regions with the largest inflows of Venezuelans have not seen any effects on labor market participation or employment, compared with regions with fewer inflows. However, our difference-in-difference estimates clearly indicate that young, low-educated Ecuadoran workers in high-inflow regions have been adversely affected. Specifically, the estimates that these workers have experienced reductions in employment quality, a 5 percentage-point increase in the rate of informality, and a 13 percentage-point reduction in earnings, relative to workers with similar characteristics living in areas with very low or non-existent inflows of Venezuelans.
  • Publication
    COVID-19 in LAC: High Frequency Phone Surveys - Results First Wave
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-06) Ballon, Paola; Cuesta, Jose; Olivieri, Sergio; Rivadeneira, Ana
    Unemployment is rising quickly and affected households are losing their main source of incomes. There is an obvious need for speeding up public intervention in the areas of virtual learning and access to medical attention and medicines across most vulnerable households. Reducing food consumption is the main mechanism to cope with the crisis for most households across the region. Despite a large rate of approval for governments’ interventions, lack of financial support to population, lack of enforcement or late response are the key area of public dissatisfaction. Unsurprisingly, there is a wide variation in abidance with lock-down measures mandated across countries. In countries like Bolivia, El Salvador, Honduras, and Peru over 90 percent of the population report to respect and follow the lockdown.
  • Publication
    COVID-19 in LAC: High Frequency Phone Surveys - Results Second Wave
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-07) Ballon, Paola; Lara Ibarra, Gabriel; Olivieri, Sergio; Rivadeneira, Ana
    Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) continues to preoccupy the population in Latin America and Caribbean (LAC), as do the pandemic’s economic ramifications. The willingness and or ability of people to follow the recommendation to stay at home began to noticeably tail off by the beginning of July. A gradual return to work is observed across all countries, although the situation remains less dynamic than before COVID. Among people re-engaged in the labor market, the majority are coming back to their pre-COVID jobs. Food insecurity has receded but continues to be a major issue for many families in the region. COVID has served to exacerbate existing disparities across the region with respect to medical care. Education continued in most cases thanks to distance learning. On most countries, over 90 percent of children were able to participate in distance learning activities during second wave.