Brazil and South Korea: Two Tales Of a Middle-Income Trap

Reform and Opening-up profoundly altered the face of China. From an agricultural backwards country, which had suffered humiliation by Western powers and Japan in the 19thand early 20th century, to the largest economy in the world in Purchasing Power Parity terms, the Chinese saga for reinsertion into the global scene is not a miracle. It is the result of hard work, visionary leadership and the wise use of its most widely available commodity: its hard-working people. Of course, there ...

يعاود الفاتح من ماي اطلالته السنوية لينقش في الذاكرة تخليدا لأرواح نقابيي شيكاغو التي ضحوا بها في منتصف ثمانينيات القرن التاسع عشر إيمانا بضرورة تحسين شروط وظروف العمل، ووجوب حصر ساعاته اليومية في حدود الثمانية. وبعد قرابة ثلاثين عاما على أحداث شيكاغو، سيعرف المغرب - مع انتشار العمل المأجور خلال فترة الحماية - تأسيس أولى نقاباته، بمفهومها الحديث، بعد ترخيص الاقامة الفرنسية لنشاطات كل من "الجمعية العامة لموظفي الحماية" في ماي سنة 1919, يليها "تجمع الشحن والافراغ المغربي" في يونيو، ث ...

In a globalized world, the ability of countries to innovate is crucial to creating high levels of value added and enhancing economic competitiveness. Silicon Valley, USA, is a development model that many African countries seek to emulate by creating «African Valleys». The success of major US corporations has persuaded a great number of players that new technologies are essential drivers of growth, and several states have implemented policies to stimulate the development of start-ups ...

L’économie marocaine se trouve aujourd’hui à une étape cruciale de son évolution. Le ralentissement tendanciel de la croissance, persistance du chômage de masse, faibles gains de productivité, perte en compétitivité, lenteur de la transformation structurelle, approfondissement des inégalités, déclassement social... etc. sont autant d’indicateurs, dont la liste n’est pas fermée, qui plaident pour le dépassement du modèle de croissance poursuivi depuis plusieurs années. La nécessité d ...

The “middle-income trap” has become a broad designation trying to capture the many cases of developing countries that succeeded in evolving from low- to middle-levels of per capita income, but then appeared to stall, losing momentum along the route toward the higher income levels of advanced economies. Such a trap may well characterize the experience of most of Latin America since the 1980s, and in recent years middle-income countries elsewhere have expressed fears of following a si ...

The author is an alumnus of the 2018 Atlantic Dialogues Emerging Leaders program Tech industries, despite leading the charge for change in many areas of modern life, have traditionally been one of the worst industries for gender equality. But now, it looks like technology itself could finally start to break down some of the barriers to entry and alter the socio-economic landscape beyond recognition. It could put women and under-represented minorities on the financial and technologi ...

Imagining world trade without the WTO/GATT system. It was after all, the case through recorded history until around 1950. But today’s economies are far more globally integrated than in the past, and information technologies which facilitate communication and coordination are clearly pointing to even more integration in the future. Under a no-WTO scenario, this brief formulates seven predictions. The danger to the WTO is clear and present, and it is on four fronts. First is the fail ...

The economic picture in South Africa is clear and well known: low economic growth, high unemployment rates, and constrained fiscal policy threatened by rating agencies. The causes of such situations are diverse and both internal and external. How can growth be boosted? The African continental free trade area offers a great opportunity to South Africa to take advantage of the continent’s more than one billion of potential consumers and build a new growth paradigm based on export (rat ...

Access to electricity is a key factor for the future of the African continent. Energy poverty and lack of universal access to electricity services are, in fact, remarkably hurting human progress in Africa. Today, sub-Saharan Africa hosts 14 percent of the world’s population but 60 percent of the world’s people without access to electricity: of the more than 1 billion people globally who had no access to electricity, around 600 million lived in the region. In these conditions, many A ...