Jose Cuesta
Biographic Data
| ID | 714432 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jose Cuesta |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jose |
| FAMILY NAME | Cuesta |
| SIGNATURE | CUESTA J |
| AFFILIATIONS | World Bank |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4905-6606 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 38 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 39 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 38 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Participatory Myths, Consultations and Innovative Evaluations
Participation is often praised for strengthening democracy. In human rights policymaking, it is expected to enhance legitimacy and inclusion. However, recent scholarship questions whether more consultation necessarily improves outcomes, as emblematic constitution-making processes have fallen short of their intended goals. Does this also apply to understudied forms of participation, such as consultations on human rights? This article analyses publ…
Broadening the Climate–Conflict Nexus Through Social Sustainability
Climate change is often cited as a driver of violent conflict, yet its broader social impacts remain less understood. This paper reviews existing evidence and explores links between climate change, conflict and social sustainability—focusing on inclusion, resilience, cohesion and legitimacy. Using recent data, it examines associations between climate events, conflict and social sustainability without inferring causation. The findings suggest rela…
Social sustainability and the development process
Few dispute that development processes should be both economically and environmentally sustainable. Many also call for development to be socially sustainable, yet the contours, distinctiveness, and implications of this concept remain largely unspecified, certainly as it pertains to understanding and engaging with development processes. Development is socially sustainable, we argue, when all people feel part of the development process and believe …
Human Rights Economic Dividends
Economies embracing principles like nondiscrimination are presumed to reap significant rewards, while violations incur heavy costs. We call these benefits human rights economic dividends —the economic gains that arise when policymaking is guided by human rights principles. This article offers an initial quantification of that dividend by estimating the economic impact from the implementation of a recently approved bill in Ghana directly undermini…
Social sustainability, poverty and income
Social sustainability is poorly understood and vaguely defined, despite growing appreciation for its relevance as a concept. This article advances our empirical understanding of social sustainability by constructing a global database of 71 indicators across 193 countries and 37 territories between 2016 and 2020. Indicators are flexibly clustered around four dimensions—social inclusion, resilience, social cohesion and process legitimacy—for which …
Assessing the success of National Human Rights Action Plans from a political economy perspective
Citizen Participation and Political Trust in Latin America and the Caribbean
Children in the Context of War
The double burden of material deprivation and the psychological consequences of violent conflict has long-lasting effects on children’s wellbeing. Assessing child needs is therefore crucial to inform policies and move from humanitarian assistance towards reconstruction and development. We provide an analysis of the situation of children in east Mosul, Iraq, using unique data from a rapid humanitarian assessment administered on the ground immediat…
The Equity Effects of Cadasters in Colombia
Well-functioning cadasters help to secure property rights, make economies perform more efficiently and promote environmental conservation. However, their equity effects are less known. Our study addresses how and to what extent cadasters, and reforms to them, affect equity. We address this question through an ex-ante simulation methodology using static partial equilibrium fiscal incidence analysis. We apply it to a recent expansion of the cadaste…
Social Exclusion
There are multiple estimates of global monetary and multidimensional poverty, but there are still no estimates of populations at risk of social exclusion worldwide. This paper fills this gap by estimating the share and number of populations at risk of exclusion globally and regionally. It develops a conceptual framework of social exclusion that builds on Sen’s capability approach and emphasizes the relative, multidimensional, and dynamic features…
Social Sustainability, Poverty, and Income
Social sustainability is often poorly understood and vaguely defined, despite growing appreciation of its relevance as a concept. This paper advances the empirical understanding of social sustainability by constructing a global database of 71 indicators across 193 countries and 37 territories between 2016 and 2020. The indicators are flexibly clustered around four dimensions—social inclusion, resilience, social cohesion, and process legitimacy—fo…
Fiscal Policy and Child Poverty in Belarus
Urban social assistance
Evaluating a citizen security pilot in Honduras
Long-term Well-being among Survivors of the Rwandan and Cambodian Genocides
This paper adds to the thin empirical literature estimating the long-term effects of exposure to conflict from in utero to adolescence on adult well-being. The effects through adolescence of the two worst genocides in recent history – those occurring in Rwanda (1994) and Cambodia (1975–79) – are examined. The Rwandan genocide is shown to have produced long-term health outcomes among women exposed to the conflict during adolescence. A further cont…
Urban-Sensitive Social Protection
Experience with urban social protection programmes is relatively limited in the Global South. Extensions or duplicates of rural social assistance programmes do not reflect the distinct vulnerabilities of the urban poor, who face higher living costs and more precarious employment, and are not reached by social insurance schemes that are designed for formally employed workers. Neither the Sustainable Development Goals nor the New Urban Agenda refle…
The Nicaragua Protest Crisis in 2018–2019
Despite constant monitoring, we lack a good explanation for the 2018–2019 protest crisis in Nicaragua. The escalation of protests, repression, duration, and the death toll are surprising. Applying a novel political and economic cost framework, we benchmark Nicaragua’s historical and recent political protests and explain the Ortega administration’s responses, thus providing a rich case (with comparative data for context) that makes sense of this e…
The political economy of multidimensional child poverty measurement
As part of the 2030 Agenda, much effort has been exerted in comparing multidimensional child poverty measures both technically and conceptually. Yet, few countries have adopted and used any of these measures in policymaking. This paper explores the reasons for this absence from a political economy perspective. It develops an innovative political economy framework for poverty measurement and a hypothesis whereby a country will only produce and use…
Is it really possible for countries to simultaneously grow and reduce poverty and inequality? Going beyond global narratives
Global narratives underscore that economic growth can often coincide with reductions in poverty and inequality. However, the experiences of several countries over recent decades confirm that inequality can widen or narrow in response to policy choices and independent of economic growth. This paper analyses five country cases, Brazil, Cambodia, Mali, Peru and Tanzania. These countries are the most successful in reducing inequality and poverty whil…
An Integrated Framework for Child Poverty and Well-Being Measurement
Multidimensional child poverty (MDCP) and well-being measures are increasingly developed in the literature. Much more effort has gone to highlight the differences across measurement approaches than to stress the multiple conceptual and practical similarities across measures. We propose a new framework, the Integrated Framework for Child Poverty—IFCP––that combines three main conceptual approaches, the Capability Approach, Human Rights, and Basic …
Fiscal Policy, Multidimensional Poverty, and Equity in Uganda
Fiscal incidence analysis is the most widely used methodology to assess the distributional effects of fiscal policies. However, despite 40 years of use and refinement, it still lacks. A focus on the redistributive capacity of fiscal policy among children is increasingly important as policymakers pay growing attention to the disproportionate incidence of poverty among children globally. This paper brings a child-dedicated focus to fiscal incidence…
The Gendered Poverty Effects of the Covid-19 Pandemic in Colombia
Social Protection in Contexts of Fragility and Forced Displacement
Effective social protection is increasingly as essential to supporting affected populations in situations of protracted instability and displacement. Despite the growing use of social protection in these settings, there is comparatively little rigorous research on what works, for whom, and why. This special issue contributes by adding seven high-quality studies that raise substantially our understanding of the role of social protection in fragile…
Wash and Nutrition Synergies
This paper develops a simple econometric strategy to operationalise the United Nations Children’s Fund’s (UNICEF’s) conceptual framework for nutrition. It estimates the extent to which child stunting correlates with investments in water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) across population groups (poor and nonpoor) and residence (urban and rural). Moving away from estimating single intervention marginal returns, the empirical framework of interventio…
Is long-term food insecurity inevitable in Asia
This article questions two widely accepted claims on long-term food insecurity in Asia, the world's (heterogeneous) region with the largest number of undernourished individuals. The first claim is that food production may not grow as fast as the pace of population growth in Asia, which will reach 5 billion by 2050. The second claim is that an unstoppable emergence of a middle class in Asia will dramatically change the composition of food demand. …
The Nicaragua Protest Crisis in 2018–2019
Despite constant monitoring, we lack a good explanation for the 2018–2019 protest crisis in Nicaragua. The escalation of protests, repression, duration, and the death toll are surprising. Applying a novel political and economic cost framework, we benchmark Nicaragua’s historical and recent political protests and explain the Ortega administration’s responses, thus providing a rich case (with comparative data for context) that makes sense of this e…
An Integrated Framework for Child Poverty and Well-Being Measurement
Multidimensional child poverty (MDCP) and well-being measures are increasingly developed in the literature. Much more effort has gone to highlight the differences across measurement approaches than to stress the multiple conceptual and practical similarities across measures. We propose a new framework, the Integrated Framework for Child Poverty—IFCP––that combines three main conceptual approaches, the Capability Approach, Human Rights, and Basic …
The Gendered Poverty Effects of the Covid-19 Pandemic in Colombia
The effects of trust on victimization in Colombia
The allegedly complex relationship between trust and victimization has rarely been modeled and, when done, the effect of trust on victimization has been found not statistically significant. This study finds otherwise, estimating an instrumental model with community data from Cali, Colombia. Cali's dismal levels of victimization were only second to Medellin, the most violent city of the world in the 1990s. But Cali also pioneered a strategy of soc…
Child Malnutrition and the Provision of Water and Sanitation in the Philippines
The prospects for achieving the Millennium Development Goal on nutrition are predicted to be bleak in the Philippines. These predictions, however, take no account of the interactions between nutritional and sanitary interventions. These interactions are reported to matter in the Philippines and elsewhere, but evidence is far from conclusive. Using a nationwide demographic survey, this paper employs two alternative estimation techniques (probits a…
Political Space, Pro-Poor Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy in Honduras
This article assesses the political and socio-economic consequences of the Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) in Honduras. The analysis deploys several techniques, including poverty narratives, stakeholder analysis and taxonomy analysis, and is also based on quantitative and qualitative data, including socio-economic indicators, PRS spending execution and interviews with stakeholders. It argues that in Honduras the PRS constituted a missed opportun…
Fiscal Policy, Multidimensional Poverty, and Equity in Uganda
Fiscal incidence analysis is the most widely used methodology to assess the distributional effects of fiscal policies. However, despite 40 years of use and refinement, it still lacks. A focus on the redistributive capacity of fiscal policy among children is increasingly important as policymakers pay growing attention to the disproportionate incidence of poverty among children globally. This paper brings a child-dedicated focus to fiscal incidence…
Social Spending, Distribution, and Equality of Opportunities
Food security and public agricultural spending in Bolivia
Citizen Participation and Political Trust in Latin America and the Caribbean
Urban-Sensitive Social Protection
Experience with urban social protection programmes is relatively limited in the Global South. Extensions or duplicates of rural social assistance programmes do not reflect the distinct vulnerabilities of the urban poor, who face higher living costs and more precarious employment, and are not reached by social insurance schemes that are designed for formally employed workers. Neither the Sustainable Development Goals nor the New Urban Agenda refle…
Theory and Empirics of Democracy and Crime Revisited
From Economicist to Culturalist Development Theories
From Economicist to Culturalist Development Theories
Determinantes Socieconómicos en la Lucha contra la Malaria en Honduras
Existe un escaso conocimiento a escala mundial de los determinantes socioeconómicos de la malaria, una tragedia que ha trascendido los límites sanitarios para convertirse en un obstáculo al desarrollo. La evaluación de intervenciones públicas concretas provee importante información pero es insuficiente para lograr un conocimiento extensivo de qué factores socioeconómicos (a nivel del hogar y de la comunidad) están más asociados con los diferencia…
Mortalidad Infantil, Equidad y Eficiencia
Child Malnutrition and the Provision of Water and Sanitation in the Philippines
The prospects for achieving the Millennium Development Goal on nutrition are predicted to be bleak in the Philippines. These predictions, however, take no account of the interactions between nutritional and sanitary interventions. These interactions are reported to matter in the Philippines and elsewhere, but evidence is far from conclusive. Using a nationwide demographic survey, this paper employs two alternative estimation techniques (probits a…
Political Space, Pro-Poor Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy in Honduras
This article assesses the political and socio-economic consequences of the Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) in Honduras. The analysis deploys several techniques, including poverty narratives, stakeholder analysis and taxonomy analysis, and is also based on quantitative and qualitative data, including socio-economic indicators, PRS spending execution and interviews with stakeholders. It argues that in Honduras the PRS constituted a missed opportun…
Equality of Opportunities, Redistribution and Fiscal Policies
This paper brings back the fiscal angle to the analysis of equal opportunities both by connecting traditional benefit-incidence analysis of public spending with equal opportunities and by conducting ex-ante micro-simulations on the fiscal cost of equal opportunity policies in education. Four simulations are conducted in Liberia, a country devastated by a civil war, with serious educational enrollment gaps and fiscal policies highly dependent on i…
A Qualitative Analysis of Policymaking on the Food Price Crisis in the Andean Region
The effects of trust on victimization in Colombia
The allegedly complex relationship between trust and victimization has rarely been modeled and, when done, the effect of trust on victimization has been found not statistically significant. This study finds otherwise, estimating an instrumental model with community data from Cali, Colombia. Cali's dismal levels of victimization were only second to Medellin, the most violent city of the world in the 1990s. But Cali also pioneered a strategy of soc…
A World Free of Poverty… but of Hunger and Malnutrition
Food security and public agricultural spending in Bolivia
Theory and Empirics of Democracy and Crime Revisited
Is long-term food insecurity inevitable in Asia
This article questions two widely accepted claims on long-term food insecurity in Asia, the world's (heterogeneous) region with the largest number of undernourished individuals. The first claim is that food production may not grow as fast as the pace of population growth in Asia, which will reach 5 billion by 2050. The second claim is that an unstoppable emergence of a middle class in Asia will dramatically change the composition of food demand. …
Monitoring global and national food price crises
Social Spending, Distribution, and Equality of Opportunities
Social Protection in Contexts of Fragility and Forced Displacement
Effective social protection is increasingly as essential to supporting affected populations in situations of protracted instability and displacement. Despite the growing use of social protection in these settings, there is comparatively little rigorous research on what works, for whom, and why. This special issue contributes by adding seven high-quality studies that raise substantially our understanding of the role of social protection in fragile…
Wash and Nutrition Synergies
This paper develops a simple econometric strategy to operationalise the United Nations Children’s Fund’s (UNICEF’s) conceptual framework for nutrition. It estimates the extent to which child stunting correlates with investments in water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) across population groups (poor and nonpoor) and residence (urban and rural). Moving away from estimating single intervention marginal returns, the empirical framework of interventio…
The political economy of multidimensional child poverty measurement
As part of the 2030 Agenda, much effort has been exerted in comparing multidimensional child poverty measures both technically and conceptually. Yet, few countries have adopted and used any of these measures in policymaking. This paper explores the reasons for this absence from a political economy perspective. It develops an innovative political economy framework for poverty measurement and a hypothesis whereby a country will only produce and use…
Is it really possible for countries to simultaneously grow and reduce poverty and inequality? Going beyond global narratives
Global narratives underscore that economic growth can often coincide with reductions in poverty and inequality. However, the experiences of several countries over recent decades confirm that inequality can widen or narrow in response to policy choices and independent of economic growth. This paper analyses five country cases, Brazil, Cambodia, Mali, Peru and Tanzania. These countries are the most successful in reducing inequality and poverty whil…
An Integrated Framework for Child Poverty and Well-Being Measurement
Multidimensional child poverty (MDCP) and well-being measures are increasingly developed in the literature. Much more effort has gone to highlight the differences across measurement approaches than to stress the multiple conceptual and practical similarities across measures. We propose a new framework, the Integrated Framework for Child Poverty—IFCP––that combines three main conceptual approaches, the Capability Approach, Human Rights, and Basic …
Fiscal Policy, Multidimensional Poverty, and Equity in Uganda
Fiscal incidence analysis is the most widely used methodology to assess the distributional effects of fiscal policies. However, despite 40 years of use and refinement, it still lacks. A focus on the redistributive capacity of fiscal policy among children is increasingly important as policymakers pay growing attention to the disproportionate incidence of poverty among children globally. This paper brings a child-dedicated focus to fiscal incidence…
The Gendered Poverty Effects of the Covid-19 Pandemic in Colombia
Urban social assistance
Evaluating a citizen security pilot in Honduras
Long-term Well-being among Survivors of the Rwandan and Cambodian Genocides
This paper adds to the thin empirical literature estimating the long-term effects of exposure to conflict from in utero to adolescence on adult well-being. The effects through adolescence of the two worst genocides in recent history – those occurring in Rwanda (1994) and Cambodia (1975–79) – are examined. The Rwandan genocide is shown to have produced long-term health outcomes among women exposed to the conflict during adolescence. A further cont…
Urban-Sensitive Social Protection
Experience with urban social protection programmes is relatively limited in the Global South. Extensions or duplicates of rural social assistance programmes do not reflect the distinct vulnerabilities of the urban poor, who face higher living costs and more precarious employment, and are not reached by social insurance schemes that are designed for formally employed workers. Neither the Sustainable Development Goals nor the New Urban Agenda refle…
Economics (28 works) · Political science (28 works) · Economic growth (19 works) · Income, Poverty, and Inequality (15 works) · Poverty, Education, and Child Welfare (15 works) · Development economics (13 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Poverty (12 works) · Politics (10 works) · Geography (9 works)