The Financialization of Commodity Markets: A Short-lived Phenomenon?

After many decades of expansion, incomes and standards of living have never been better in many parts of the world. Yet, global trade and the prospects of growth still seem uncertain, and protectionism seems to be on the rise. In developed countries, there is anxiety over the loss of the manufacturing jobs that once absorbed a large share of the labor force and created a middle class that formed the core of democracy. Most middle-income countries have not yet been able to make the t ...

The rise of protectionism, economic nationalism and nativism in the United States can be attributed inter alia to the nation’s wage stagnation and rising inequality. Other countries are responding by reevaluating their reliance on the American hegemon. But this is not enough. Policy-makers also need to ask what lessons they can draw for their domestic policies from the United States’ success in creating wealth while, at the same time, failing to distribute it equitably and to reduce ...

Les chaînes de valeur mondiales offrent de nouvelles opportunités de transformation structurelle pour les pays en développement. Aujourd’hui la vision des chaînes de valeur mondiales se limitant à l’analyse des flux commerciaux et des IDE à l’échelle globale n’est plus suffisante pour répondre aux questions clés du positionnement et de la remontée dans ces chaînes de valeur, de la dynamique de la capture de la valeur et de sa pérennisation. La réponse à ces questions appelle un écla ...

The aim of this work is to contribute to the empirical literature on employment-GDP elasticities in four main ways. First, it provides a set of employment-GDP elasticities for a sample of emerging and developing economies, including 11 sub-Saharan countries, based on the GGDC 10-sectors database. Second, it assesses the extent to which manufacturing activities are inclusive compared to the rest of the economy, in terms of employment creation. Third, it explores the determinants of c ...

The current economic, political and geo-strategic dynamics, centered on the major regional groups, announce a reconfiguration of the international order in which Africa is called to play an important role through its main continental institution which is the Union African Union (AU). The AU is increasingly emerging as the continent's platform with foreign partners, and continues to face problems of dependence, governance and leadership. Therefore, in a critical and forward-looking a ...

This paper reports on the recent developments in the construction of an interregional input-output matrix for Morocco (IIOM-MOR). As part of an ongoing project that aims to specify and calibrate an interregional CGE (ICGE) model for the country, a fully specified interregional input-output database was developed under conditions of limited information. Such database is needed for future calibration of the ICGE model. We conduct an analysis of the intraregional and interregional shar ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...