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 - 10 of 13
  • Publication
    What Is Behind The Decline in Poverty Since 2000? Evidence from Bangladesh, Peru, and Thailand
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-10) Inchauste, Gabriela; Olivieri, Sergio; Saavedra, Jamie; Winkler, Hernan
    This paper quantifies the contributions of different factors to poverty reduction observed in Bangladesh, Peru and Thailand over the last decade. In contrast to methods that focus on aggregate summary statistics, the method adopted here generates entire counterfactual distributions to account for the contributions of demographics and income from labor and non-labor sources in explaining poverty reduction. The authors find that the most important contributor was the growth in labor income, mostly in the form of farm income in Bangladesh and Thailand and non-farm income in the case of Peru. This growth in labor incomes was driven by higher returns to individual and household endowments, pointing to increases in productivity and real wages as the driving force behind poverty declines. Lower dependency ratios also helped to reduce poverty, particularly in Bangladesh. Non-labor income contributed as well, albeit to a smaller extent, in the form of international remittances in the case of Bangladesh and through public and private transfers in Peru and Thailand. Transfers are more important in explaining the reduction in extreme compared with moderate poverty.
  • Publication
    The Costs of Staying Healthy: COVID-19 in LAC
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-04) Ballon, Paola; Mejia-Mantilla, Carolina; Olivieri, Sergio; Lara Ibarra, Gabriel; Romero, Javier
    COVID-19 closures in Latin American and the Caribbean countries helped to curb the spread of the virus, but inevitably brought negative consequences for households, principally in the form of job losses, income reduction, and, in some cases, food insecurity. Future policy measures should aim to strike the right balance between saving lives and protecting livelihoods. Where closures are necessary, they should be adapted to a country's labor market and other localized conditions so as to minimize profound welfare losses. Governments should strive for robust and agile social safety net systems to be able to respond to the sudden falls in household welfare.
  • Publication
    Assessing Poverty and Distributional Impacts of the Global Crisis in the Philippines : A Microsimulation Approach
    (2010-04-01) Habib, Bilal; Narayan, Ambar; Olivieri, Sergio; Sanchez-Paramo, Carolina
    As the financial crisis has spread through the world, the lack of real-time data has made it difficult to track its impact in developing countries. This paper uses a micro-simulation approach to assess the poverty and distributional effects of the crisis in the Philippines. The authors find increases in both the level and the depth of aggregate poverty. Income shocks are relatively large in the middle part of the income distribution. They also find that characteristics of people who become poor because of the crisis are different from those of both chronically poor people and the general population. The findings can be useful for policy makers wishing to identify leading monitoring indicators to track the impact of macroeconomic shocks and to design policies that protect vulnerable groups.
  • 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
    Estimating the Welfare Costs of Reforming the Iraq Public Distribution System: A Mixed Demand Approach
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-06) Ramadan, Racha; Krishnan, Nandini; Olivieri, Sergio
    The Iraqi Public Distribution System is the largest universal, in-kind subsidy system in the world. In 2012, the Public Distribution System transfers accounted for as much as 30 percent of incomes of the poorest 10 percent of the Iraqi population and provided 70 percent of the calories of the poorest 40 percent. In effect, the Public Distribution System remains the only safety net program that covers all the poor and vulnerable in the country. Yet, it is a very inefficient and expensive means to deliver transfers to the poor and creates distortions in the economy as well as an unsustainable fiscal burden. The fiscal crisis since mid-2014 has put reform of the Public Distribution System back on the agenda. This paper employs a mixed demand approach to analyze the consumption patterns of Iraqi households and quantify the welfare impact of a potential reform of the Public Distribution System in urban areas. The results show that household consumption of Public Distribution System items is relatively inelastic to changes in price. Consumption is more inelastic for the poorest quintiles and, for much of the population, these goods are not inferior, but rather normal goods. Cross-sectional comparisons suggest that with improvements in welfare levels, and with well-functioning markets, some segments of the population are substituting away from the Public Distribution System and increasing their consumption of market substitutes. The removal of all subsidies will require compensating poor households by 74.4 percent of their expenditures compared with nearly 40 percent for the richest households in urban areas.
  • 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
    Big Data for Sampling Design: The Venezuelan Migration Crisis in Ecuador
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-07) Munoz, Juan; Munoz, Jose; Olivieri, Sergio
    The worsening of Ecuador's socioeconomic conditions and the rapid inflow of Venezuelan migrants demand a rapid government response. Representative information on the migration and host communities is vital for evidence-based policy design. This study presents an innovative methodology based on the use of big data for sampling design of a representative survey of migrants and host communities' populations. This approach tackles the difficulties posed by the lack of information on the total number of Venezuelan migrants—regular and irregular—and their geographical location in the country. The total estimated population represents about 3 percent of the total Ecuadoran population. Venezuelans settled across urban areas, mainly in Quito, Guayaquil, and Manta (Portoviejo). The strategy implemented may be useful in designing similar exercises in countries with limited information (that is, lack of a recent census or migratory registry) and scarce resources for rapidly gathering socioeconomic data on migrants and host communities for policy design.
  • Publication
    Gender Differences in Poverty in Colombia
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-08) Buitrago, Paola; Muller, Miriam; Olivieri, Sergio; Pico, Julieth
    This note presents the gender poverty profiles for Colombia using a lifecycle approach. In Colombia, as in the vast majority of countries around the world, girls and boys are consistently poorer than adults and seniors. Notwithstanding, the difference on poverty rates between women and men during their reproductive age in Colombia is around 6 p.p. while in the world is around 2 p.p. Another interesting finding is that the likelihood of being poor diminishes with formal education, for both women and men. Nevertheless, as the level of formal education increases, the share of women among the poor do so also. This note is organized as follows: section one presents the poverty rates for women and men, by education level, marital status, location, and employment type. Section two presents the results of the lifecycle approach. The authors present the gender poverty profile when variables as age, demographic, and economic composition are combined with gender, to define the profiles. And finally, section three presents some final remarks.