Ernest John Sergenti is a Senior Research Economist in the Office of the Chief Economist for the Middle East and North Africa region. Ernest returned to the World Bank in 2017 after three years as an Assistant Vice President at Moody’s Investors Service, where he was the lead analyst for the Caucasus and Central Asia. Within the World Bank, Ernest has also worked as a macro economist, within the Western and Central Africa and South Asia regions, specializing in resource-rich economies, productivity analysis, macroeconomic modeling, and political institutional analysis. Ernest was also a Research Fellow and Statistical Consultant at Harvard University’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science. He holds a PhD in Political Science, with concentrations in Political Economy and Econometrics, from New York University and a Master of Science in Economics from the London School of Economics. Ernest has co-authored several publications, including articles in the Journal of Political Economy and the American Journal of Political Science, on economic growth, political party competition, the effectiveness of UN Peacekeeping operations, and the impacts of economic shocks on civil conflict.
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, inflation rates in most countries of the Middle East and North Africa have been lower than in Europe and the United States. This column explores why – and what are the implications for government budgets.