Session 4: Structural Change in The Global Economy and Its Meaning for Emerging Markets

Le processus continu et renforcé de l’accumulation du capital physique, dans lequel s’est engagé le Maroc depuis le début des années 2000, a permis de préserver la stabilité des équilibres fondamentaux et d’amortir les différents chocs exogènes, aussi bien internes qu’externes. Cependant, cet effort d’accumulation n’a pas permis d’insuffler un accroissement significatif des gains de productivité et d’accélérer la transformation de la base productive. Ce Policy Brief propose de décri ...

The continuous and reinforced process of accumulating physical capital, in which Morocco has embarked since the early 2000s, has helped to preserve the stability of the fundamental equilibrium and cushion the economy from various external and exogenous shocks. However, these accumulation efforts have not led to a significant increase in productivity gains or to an accelerated transformation of the productive base. This Policy Brief aims to describe the underpinnings of the capital a ...

The world economy – and emerging market and developing economies in particular – display a gap between infrastructure needs and its finance (Canuto, 2014). On the one hand, infrastructure investment has fallen far short of what would be necessary to support potential growth. On the other hand, abundant financial resources in world markets have been facing very low and decreasing interest rates, whereas opportunities of higher return from potential infrastructure assets are missed. H ...

Brazil’s labor and total-factor productivity (TFP) have featured anemic increases in the last decades (Canuto, 2016). As we illustrate here, contrary to common view, sector structures of the Brazilian GDP and employment cannot be singled out as major determinants of productivity performance. Horizontal, cross-sector factors hampering productivity increases seem to carry more weight. Brazil’s productivity performance has been dismal Since the end of the 1970s, the Brazilian labor p ...

In June 2017, the second Annual Report on Commodity Analytics and Dynamics In Africa (Arcadia report) was published, in collaboration between the OCP Policy Center and CyclOpe. Its aim is to annually report on the evolution of the economic, legal, financial and societal links between Africa and the world commodity markets, both with regard to the cyclical changes in the markets, and to the structural changes or failures that may have emerged. Focusing on 2016 and early 2017, the Arc ...

One major policy issue in Brazil is how to boost productivity, while following a path of fiscal consolidation that will take at least a decade to bring the public-debt-to-GDP ratio back to 2000 levels (Canuto, 2016a). The productivityboosting agenda includes not only the implementation of a full range of structural reforms, but also recovering and upgrading the national infrastructure and other long-term investments. Given that fiscal consolidation has already been leading to less t ...

The best way I can describe my feelings about trade these days is as an unstable anxiety disorder. Following on November 8 2016, the date of the US election, my anxiety level rose markedly as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was buried. Shortly thereafter it touched a maximum when a dangerous idea called the Border Adjustment Tax was gaining traction, and the North-American Free Trade Agreement seemed headed the way of TPP. Then I became a little less prone to panic attacks, as v ...