Washington, D.C. — The World Bank · last updated Aug 2026

Florent McIsaac

Senior Economist, Fiscal Policy & Growth

I am a macroeconomist. I build the models that help governments in developing economies navigate growth, fiscal policy, and shocks — from commodity cycles and natural disasters to the structural transformations reshaping their development pathways. A decade of macro-modeling for countries across the world.

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Portrait of Florent McIsaac
Florent McIsaac — 2023.
§ 1

Profile

I am a Senior Economist in the Fiscal Policy and Growth unit of the World Bank, working with the Bank's macro-structural model (MFMod) to analyze how policy choices play out in growth, employment, public debt, and the balance of payments. Much of my work is about resilience: how economies absorb shocks — natural disasters, commodity-price swings, global crises — and what fiscal and structural policy can do to prepare for them. The other side is structural transformation: how sectors shift as economies develop and pursue environmental and climate goals, and what those transitions mean for growth and public finances.

I joined the World Bank in its Climate Change Group, as an Economist and then Senior Economist. My recent work brings natural disasters, adaptation options, and transition pathways into the Bank's country macro-frameworks — including the analysis behind several Country Climate and Development Reports. Before the Bank, I was an economist at the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) in Paris, in the research department's GEMMES modeling program, where I led country modeling programs.

I hold a PhD in Applied Mathematics from Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Energy and Money in New Frameworks for Macro-dynamics), along with an MSc in mathematical methods for economics and finance and a BSc in applied mathematics from the same university. I remain an associate researcher of the Energy and Prosperity academic committee.

Position
Senior Economist, Fiscal Policy & Growth, The World Bank
Focus
Macro-structural modeling · resilience · structural transformation · development pathways
Education
PhD Applied Mathematics (2016) · MSc Economics & Finance (2012) · BSc Applied Mathematics (2010), Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
Previously
Economist, then Senior Economist, Climate Change Group, The World Bank (2021–2023) · Economist, AFD — GEMMES modeling program (2015–2021)
Affiliation
Energy & Prosperity academic committee, associate researcher
Languages
French (native) · English (native level) · Spanish (basic)
§ 2

Research

My research runs on two tracks that feed each other. The applied track builds and uses country-level macro-frameworks — macro-structural, input-output — to answer policy questions: how to keep debt sustainable through a commodity cycle, what a disaster does to a decade of growth, how an economy industrializes while its energy system changes. The methodological track studies development paths under uncertainty: how shocks propagate through an economy, and how growth trajectories diverge or converge when the future is stochastic.

time → income per capita
fig. 1 — Simulated development pathways, drawn live: one economy, many stochastic draws.

Fiscal policy & growth

Macro-structural modeling for policy analysis: how tax, spending, and investment choices translate into growth, employment, and debt sustainability at the country level.

MFModdebt dynamics

Resilience to shocks

The macroeconomics of natural disasters, commodity-price volatility, and balance-of-payments stress — quantifying what resilience is worth so that resilient investment gets financed.

Economic Modellingfiscal risk

Structural transformation & development pathways

How economies industrialize, formalize, and shift their sectoral and energy base — for development, environmental, or climate goals — and how to finance those transitions.

informalityinput-output

Climate & energy in the macroeconomy

Damages, adaptation, and the transition to net zero treated as macroeconomic questions — one set of shocks and investments among the others a finance ministry must weigh.

adaptationnet zero
§ 3

Recent

§ 4

Publications

635+
citations
12
h-index

Peer-reviewed articles

  1. 2025

    Decarbonization investment strategies in an uncertain climate

    Bauer, McIsaac & Hallegatte — Earth's Future, 13(5)

  2. 2024

    Modeling the macroeconomic consequences of natural disasters

    Hallegatte, Jooste & McIsaac — Economic Modelling, 139

  3. 2022

    Côte d'Ivoire's electricity challenge in 2050

    Assoumou & McIsaac — Energy Policy, 160

  4. 2021
  5. 2021

    A macroeconomic critique of integrated assessment environmental models

    Cattan & McIsaac — Review of Keynesian Economics, 9(2)

  6. 2021
  7. 2020
  8. 2020

    A representation of the world population dynamics for integrated assessment models

    Court & McIsaac — Environmental Modeling & Assessment, 25(5)

  9. 2019
  10. 2019

    Minskyan classical growth cycles: stability analysis of a stock-flow consistent model

    Bastidas, Fabre & McIsaac — Mathematics and Financial Economics, 13(3)

  11. 2018
  12. 2018

    Debt and damages: what are the chances of staying under the 2°C warming threshold?

    Bovari, Lecuyer & McIsaac — International Economics, 155

  13. 2015

    The effects of oil price shocks in a new-Keynesian framework with capital accumulation

    Vásconez, Giraud, McIsaac & Pham — Energy Policy, 86

Working papers & policy work

  1. 2025

    The macroeconomic implications of climate change impacts and adaptation options

    Abalo, Boehlert, Bui, Burns, Castillo, Chewpreecha, McIsaac et al. — World Bank Policy Research Working Paper

  2. 2024

    How delayed learning about climate uncertainty impacts decarbonization investment strategies

    Bauer, McIsaac & Hallegatte — World Bank Policy Research Working Paper

  3. 2024

    Macroeconomic implications of a transition to net-zero emissions

    Hallegatte, McIsaac, Dudu, Jooste, Knudsen & Beck — chapter in The Green Frontier (Peterson Institute for International Economics)

  4. 2017

    La dette publique française justifie-t-elle l'austérité budgétaire ?

    Giraud, McIsaac & Abi-Rafeh — CES Working Paper, Université Paris 1

  5. —

    An augmented net oil price

    Working paper — presented at IAEE conferences (Pittsburgh, Antalya)

  6. 2012

    Influence of weather variability on orange juice prices

    Frunza, Laudicina & McIsaac — SSRN working paper

From the papers — selected figures

Model output figure from Coping with Collapse
fig. 2 — From “Coping with collapse”, Ecological Economics 147 (2018).
Scenario figure from Debt and Damages
fig. 3 — From “Debt and damages”, International Economics 155 (2018).
Phase diagram from Minskyan Classical Growth Cycles
fig. 4 — From “Minskyan classical growth cycles”, Math. and Financial Economics 13 (2019).
Figure from the Brazil low-carbon input-output analysis
fig. 5 — From the Brazil low-carbon economy input-output analysis (AFD–IPEA).
Figure from Carbon Pricing and Global Warming working paper
fig. 6 — From “Carbon pricing and global warming”, AFD working paper.
World population trajectories figure
fig. 7 — From “A representation of the world population dynamics”, Env. Modeling & Assessment 25 (2020).

Full record on Google Scholar and ResearchGate; PhD thesis available here.

§ 5

Software

Away from the models, I build software. CommuteGlance is a transit app for the Washington, D.C. area that I developed: your daily commute, at a glance.

It shows live departure predictions — refreshed every 30 seconds — from WMATA and the region's other agencies (Metro, Metrobus, VRE, MARC, Fairfax Connector, ART, DASH, and more), finds the stations and stops around you, and caches schedules so it still works underground or offline.

It is also privacy-first, the way I think consumer software should be: everything stays on the device, location access is optional, and there are no analytics or tracking SDKs. Free on iOS and Android.

Download on the App Store commuteglance.com
CommuteGlance app showing live Metro departures at Metro Center and a transfer station
fig. 8 — CommuteGlance: live departures at Metro Center, with transfer timing across lines.
§ 6

Press

§ 7

Contact

For research collaboration, policy work, speaking, or press — LinkedIn is the preferred way to reach me.