Bio
Carlos Rodríguez-Castelán is the Practice Manager of the Poverty and Equity Global Practice in the Latin America and the Caribbean Region of the World Bank. He is also a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), and a Research Fellow at Mexico's National Research System (SNI).
Previously, he was a Lead Economist in the Latin America and the Caribbean Region (2022-23) and in Africa (2018-22) where he led technical and operational dialogue in Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Uruguay, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Mauritania, Ivory Coast, Benin and Togo and the Lake Chad Region on determinants of digital transformation, distributional effects of economic reforms and private sector investments, economic development in lagging regions, and improving National Statistical Systems. His latest books and policy reports are "Rising Strong: Peru Poverty and Equity Assessment," "Global Job Quality," "Digital Senegal for Inclusive Growth," "Lake Chad Regional Economic Memorandum: Development for Peace," "Welfare Impacts of Internet Adoption in African Countries," and "Mexico's Systematic Country Diagnostic."
He also was the World Bank Global Lead of the Data for Policy Global Solutions Group (2018-22), where he led the definition of the "Data for Policy initiative," corresponding to the next generation Statistical Capacity Building support to IDA countries, under IDA19 and IDA20. He also supervised the production of updated guidelines for poverty measurement and new guidelines for poverty mapping.
Previously, he was a Senior Economist in the Latin America and the Caribbean Region, and the World Bank Global Lead of the Markets and Institutions Global Solutions Group (2014-2018). He also led various lending operations, analytical programs and policy dialogue on inclusive growth in Colombia, Chile, Mexico, and Uruguay, as well as a Regional Study on Shocks and Welfare in Latin America.
He has also developed innovative tools to link World Bank operations to the twin goals of poverty reduction and boosting shared prosperity, including WELCOM, a micro-simulation tool to estimate the ex-ante distributional effects of competition reforms, and the LAC Equity Lab, a platform to track progress in the WBG twin goals across Latin America.
Prior to joining the World Bank in 2011, Carlos was a postdoctoral fellow in the Foreign Policy and Global Economy and Development programs of the Brookings Institution in Washington DC. Before that he worked for the Government of Mexico as economic adviser in the Ministry of Public Education and analyst in the Ministry of the Environment. He also held short-term research positions at the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (UN-ECLAC) in the Sub-Regional Office in Mexico City, and at the Research Department of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in Washington DC.
His main areas of interest are in public economics and development economics. His research focuses on growth, productivity and inequality analysis, fiscal and social policies, and risk management. He has over 60 published articles, chapters in books and working papers, including several papers in peer reviewed academic journals. His most recent papers are "The Effects of Climate Change in the Poorest Countries: Evidence from the Permanent Shrinking of Lake Chad" and "Global Job Quality: Evidence form Wage Employment across Developing Countries."
As of April 2017, he was ranked as one of the Top 100 Young Economists by IDEAS/RePEc (5 years or less). His research has received several awards and honorary mentions, including the 2024 IZA Award on Innovative Research in the Economics of Climate Change (IRECC), the 2018 National Award in Public Finance by the Congressional Budget Office of Mexico, the 2005 National Prize of Public Administration by the National Institute of Public Administration, and the National Prize in Economics by the Mexican Economists Association (undergraduate thesis category),
He holds a bachelor's degree in economics, a bachelor's degree in political science and a master's in public policy from Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM). He also holds a masters and doctorate in economics from Cornell University.