Stéphane Straub

Since September 1, 2023, I am chief economist for infrastructure at the World Bank. Between 2008 and 2023, I have been professor of economics at the Toulouse School of Economics, Université de Toulouse Capitole, where I remain an associate member. I have held academic positions in the US, the UK and France, and was president of the European Development Network (EUDN) between 2018 and 2023. 

My research focuses on issues of infrastructure, procurement, and more generally institutional development in the context of developing countries. A first part of my agenda covers contractual arrangements for infrastructure projects (covering transport, energy, water and sanitation, and ICT), such as concessions and more generally so-called public-private partnerships (PPPs). With my late advisor Jean-Jacques Laffont and Luis Guasch, we studied concession renegotiations. With David Martimort, we have worked on several aspects of utilities regulation, ownership, and financing, in the context of developing countries. In a paper recently accepted at JEL, with Anaïs Fabre, we review the existing empirical evidence regarding the performance of PPPs. Another part of my research focuses on infrastructure impact of roads, electricity, and generally the way firms and households deal with the (lack of) availability of such services. 

On procurement, I have worked on issues of corruption with my colleague Emmanuelle Auriol, on how drug procurement in less developped countries can be made more efficient with my colleagues Pierre Dubois and Yassine Lefouili, and on revolving doors in health procurement in Brazil with Klenio Barbosa. Finally, other contributions have dealt among others with issues of informality, electoral systems and corruption, and political connections. 

One overarching question common to this agenda is how public investment in infrastructure and the related procurement process, which represent approximately 90 percent of all investments in infrastructure in developing countries, can be made more efficient. I address these issues with a mix of methods, which include applied theory and empirical work using data from administrative sources, surveys, and experiments.

Prior to my PhD, I lived for 10 years in Paraguay (1989-1998), where I worked among others as an entrepreneur, a private consultant, a government adviser and a university professor. I have written about my life in Paraguay in the book Frontières, available as ebook on Amazon.