Jesica Torres

Economist, Office of the Chief Economist for the Middle East and North Africa, World Bank

Jesica is a Senior Economist in the MENA Chief Economist Office of the World Bank. She has co-led the last two editions of the fall MENA Economic Update. She is also co-leading the labor markets and gender flagship. Her research has explored the gains from improving the talent allocation in the region, including equalizing gender employment gaps and reallocating talent from the public to the private sector. Her research sheds light on how special provisions such as size-dependent regulations, simplified tax regimes, or preferential labor regulations distort both the selection into entrepreneurship and the behavior of firms, and how that ultimately affects the allocation of resources in the economy. As an economist at FCI, she worked on the determinants of the entry of high-growth firms and led or co-authored numerous reports analyzing the effect of the pandemic on the private sector using the COVID-19 Business Pulse Surveys. Before joining the World Bank in 2019, she worked as a Visiting Scholar in the Inter-American Development Bank, as an economic advisor in the Mexican federal government, and as a research-professor at Tecnologico de Monterrey in Mexico. She received her PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago.