Stéphane Straub

Since September 1, 2023, I am chief economist for infrastructure at the World Bank. The World Bank Chief Economist for Infrastructure Office (INFCE) produces comprehensive knowledge pertaining to policy and institutional reforms in the areas of Energy and Extractives, Transport, Urban, and Infrastructure Finance. I am also acting chief economist for Digital Development, which became a separate Vice Presidency in July 2024. 

The research program

The Infrastructure Chief Economist Office develops a research program, which main component is focused on estimating the social rate of return of infrastructure across sectors and countries to guide the prioritization of investments and support the attraction of private and commercial capital. To that end, we are putting together a worldwide database of infrastructure capital stocks and construction costs, for the energy, transport, digital, and water and sanitation sectors, and estimating rates of return of infrastructure investments across countries and sectors.

Other lines of work I am involved in include:

• The analysis of the so called "digital enablement" effect, namely whether digital technologies have the potential to enhance efficiency and reduce GHG emissions throughout the economy and in particular in other infrastructure sectors such as energy

• The energy efficiency agenda, with a focus on demand management programs

• Productive development in the context of the energy access extension agenda

• Transportation public-private partnerships (PPPs) in Latin America, with a focus on understanding their financial structure, and their maintenance and safety implications with fine geospatial data on road quality.

• How digital technologies in general, and AI in particular, shape the job agenda in emerging and developing economies

• New urban development forms, including private cities and urban PPPs

In addition, we also provide broad support to analytical efforts related to infrastructure issues throughout the World Bank Group, and publish regular blogs, working papers, and journal articles.

The Infrastructure Data & Diagnostics Program 

We curate and maintain the main data portal on infrastructure topics, called Data 360. This portal is a unified entry point for all data on infrastructure created or gathered by World Bank departments. It also serves as a resources for country-specific diagnostic work, aimed at supporting the definition of operational work.

Seminars and Conferences

Finally, we organize regular conferences, workshops, and seminars. Our flagship event is a yearly high level conference, Infra4dev, which promotes dialogue and exchange between leading edge economic researchers and the wider community of policymakers and practitioners on leveraging infrastructure for development.  

In 2024, we partnered with University Mohammed VI Polytechnic (UM6P) for the fourth annual #Infra4Dev Conference, held on the 9th and 10th May 2024 in Rabat, Morocco.

In 2025, we partnered with Lingnan College of Sun Yat-sen University, for the fifth annual Infra4Dev Conference, which was held on the 15th and 16th May 2025 in Guangzhou, China.

Academic Life

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.