Oscar Barriga-Cabanillas

Oscar Barriga-Cabanillas

Economist

The World Bank

I am an Economist at the World Bank, based in DC, currently working in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

I am passionate about tackling complex development challenges. My work concentrates on improving the targeting of social programs, reducing the cost of providing services to low-income households, and addressing spatial inequalities

I leverage innovative data sources—ranging from traditional surveys to satellite imagery, mobile phone records, and high-frequency transaction data. Always happy to brainstorm about how data can help to understand and solve problems!

My experience spans low—and middle-income countries in Latin America, Africa, and South Asia, as well as fragile and conflict-affected contexts such as Haiti and Afghanistan.

I hold a Ph.D. in Agricultural and Resource Economics from UC Davis and an MSc degree in Economics from Universidad de los Andes (Colombia).

Publications

"Probing the limits of mobile phone metadata for poverty prediction and impact evaluation" (with Blumenstock, Lybbert, Putman), 2025, Journal of Development Economics.

“Rapid poverty estimation using ready-to-use mobile phone data: An application to Côte d’Ivoire" (with Milusheva,Makhlouk, Zhang), 2024, Proceedings of the 7th ACM SIGCAS/SIGCHI Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies.

“The Effects of Local Market Concentration and International Competition on Firm Productivity: Evidence from Mexico"(with Rodriguez-Castelan, Lopez-Calva), 2023, World Development.

“Inequality Stagnation in Latin America in the Aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis.“ (with Cord,Lucchetti, Sousa, and Valderrama), 2017, Review of Development Economics.

Working Papers

“Selection and Comparative Advantage in Technology Adoption.“ (with Tjernstrom, Ghanem, Lybbert, Michler, Michuda), Revision invited at Econometrica

“Afghanistan’s New Economic Landscape : Using Nighttime Lights to Understand the Civilian Economy after 2021.“ (with Teruggi, Kosmidou-Bradley, Redaelli, Tateishi), 2024, World Bank Policy Working Paper No. 10969. Revise and resubmit

“Updating Poverty in Afghanistan Using the SWIFT-Plus Methodology.“(with Chawla, Redaelli, Yoshida), 2024, World Bank Policy Working Paper No. 10616

“Sustaining Poverty Gains: A Vulnerability Map to Guide the Expansion of Social Registries.” (with Bossuroy, Corral, Castelan, Skoufias), 2024, World Bank Policy Working Paper No. 10890

“Losing to Inflation : Unmasking the Unequal Price Effect of Inflation across Households.” (with Nasir, Kishwar, and Meyer), 2024, World Bank Policy Working Paper No.11011

“Genetic Dilution Erodes Productivity: Exploring Farmers’ Low Adoption Levels of Improved Maize In Ethiopia.“ (with Michuda, Chiarella, Correa),

Policy Work

"Evaluating Private Capital Mobilization Potential for Resilient Digital Connectivity: The Digital Quality Divide in Pakistan.“ (with Bezzina,Khan,Ogbunude,Rossotto,and Meyer), World Bank Publications, Washington D.C., 2024

“Vulnerability to Shocks and Climate Change in Peru (Chapter 4).“ (with Arteage, de la Fro Giuffra) Rising Strong: Peru Poverty and Equity Assessment, World Bank Publications, Washington D.C., 2023

“Creating Fiscal Space to Build Human Capital : Public Finance Review - Benin.“ (with Picarelli), 2023, Benin Public Expenditure Review

“Poverty and Shared Prosperity in Uruguay.“ (with Rodriguez-Castelan, Gindelsky, Lugo, and Sousa) in L. Cord, M. E. Genoni and C. Rodríguez-Castelán (eds.) Shared Prosperity and Poverty Eradication in Latin America and the Caribbean, World Bank Publications, Washington D.C., 2015

“Is Uruguay more Resilient this Time? Distributional Impacts of a Crisis Similar to the 2001/02 Argentine Crisis.“ (with Lugo, Nielsen, Lugo, and Zanetti), 2015. Journal of Banking and Financial Economics