Person:
Medvedev, Denis

Finance, Competitiveness and Innovation
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International trade, Jobs, Inequality, Poverty, Private Sector Development, Financial Sector Development
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Finance, Competitiveness and Innovation
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Last updated: January 31, 2023
Biography
Denis Medvedev manages the Firms, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation unit of the Finance, Competitiveness, and Innovation Global Practice at the World Bank Group. The unit is a team of microeconomists and development practitioners working to provide cutting-edge, evidence-based advice to developing countries around the globe on policies to promote innovation, entrepreneurship, firm upgrading, technology adoption, and productivity. It accomplishes this by carrying out original research, contributing to lending and technical assistance engagements led by the World Bank Group regional units, and collaborating with multilateral institutions as well as bilateral partners and donors. Denis’ own research has recently focused on firm growth and productivity, while his earlier work explored economic growth, income distribution dynamics, international trade, and the Sustainable Development Goals. In his previous assignments at the World Bank, he was responsible for policy dialogue, lending operations, and analytical work across a range of countries in Africa, East and South Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America & the Caribbean, as well as developing forward-looking scenarios for the global economy in the Development Prospects group. He is an author of more than 30 peer-reviewed journal articles, books and book chapters, and World Bank reports. He holds a Ph.D. from the American University.
Citations 7 Scopus

Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Publication
    Challenges to MDG Achievement in Low Income Countries : Lessons from Ghana and Honduras
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-11) Bussolo, Maurizio; Medvedev, Denis
    This paper summarizes the policy lessons from applications of the Maquette for MDG Simulations (MAMS) model to two low income countries: Ghana and Honduras. Results show that costs of MDGs achievement could reach 10-13 percent of GDP by 2015, although, given the observed low productivity in the provision of social services, significant savings may be realized by improving efficiency. Sources of financing also matter: foreign aid inflows can reduce international competitiveness through real exchange appreciation, while domestic financing can crowd out the private sector and slow poverty reduction. Spending a large share of a fixed budget on growth-enhancing infrastructure may mean sacrificing some human development, even if higher growth is usually associated with lower costs of social services. The pursuit of MDGs increases demand for skills: while this encourages higher educational attainments, in the short term this could lead to increased income inequality and a lower poverty elasticity of growth.
  • Publication
    Internal Migration in Ghana : Determinants and Welfare Impacts
    (2010-04-01) Ackah, Charles; Medvedev, Denis
    Using a recently compiled dataset on migration and remittances in Ghana, this paper estimates the determinants of an individual s likelihood to be an internal migrant and the relationship between internal migration and welfare. The analysis finds that the likelihood to migrate is determined by a combination of individual (pull) and community-level (push) characteristics. The probability of migration is higher for younger and more educated individuals, but communities with higher levels of literacy, higher rates of subsidized medical care, and better access to water and sanitation are less likely to produce migrants. The analysis finds that households with migrants tend to be better off than similar households without migrants, even after controlling for the fact that households with migrants are a non-random sample of Ghanaians. However, the positive relationship is only true for households with at least one migrant in urban areas; the welfare of households with migrants exclusively in rural areas is no different from households without any migrants.
  • Publication
    Achieving Accelerated and Shared Growth in Ghana : A MAMS-Based Analysis of Costs and Opportunities
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-02) Bogetić, Željko; Medvedev, Denis; Bussolo, Maurizio
    This paper relies on the recently developed Maquette for Millennium Development Goals Simulations (MAMS) model to assess the consistency of alternative scaling-up and policy packages for growth and achievement of the Millennium Development Goals in Ghana. In the baseline scenario, Ghana's strong near and medium-term growth outlook puts it in a good position to achieve the poverty Millennium Development Goal ahead of schedule, but other goals are likely to remain elusive before 2015. In the accelerated growth scenario-which addresses the major gaps in water and sanitation and other infrastructure-even more rapid growth and poverty reduction are possible, but important targets in the areas of education, health, and environment remain unattainable. Although growth is complementary to achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, the authors also find important growth-human development trade-offs in the near term. The estimates show that the resource requirements for achieving the key Millennium Development Goals by 2015 are large, reaching US$82 per capita in an illustrative foreign-grant financed scenario. Increased intake and retention of students contribute to rising scarcity of unskilled labor, buttressing unskilled wages, while high demand for skills from the sectors related to the Millennium Development Goals raises the returns to human capital. These developments lead to improvements in the welfare of the poorest members of Ghanaian society and contribute to a small reduction in overall inequality.