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

June 9, 2021

The middle-income trap may well characterize the experience of Brazil and most of Latin America since the 1980s. Conversely, South Korea maintained its pace of evolution, reaching a high-income status. Such divergence of economic growth can be related to their distinctive performances of domestic accumulation of technological and organizational capabilities. Their different approaches to global value chains and trade globalization reinforced such discrepancy in domestic accumulation processes.

Speakers
Otaviano Canuto
Senior Fellow
Senior Fellow at the Policy Center for the New South, Affiliate Professor at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University and Non-Resident Senior Fellow at Brookings Institute. Former Vice President and Executive Director at the World Bank, Executive Director at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Vice President at the Inter-American Development Bank. ...

RELATED CONTENT

  • Authors
    February 1, 2017
    L’analyse des relations commerciales entre le Maroc et l’Afrique subsaharienne fait ressortir un volume des échanges croissants, reflétant ainsi une dynamisation continue des leurs relations commerciales. Une tendance similaire est observée au niveau des investissements directs étrangers, qui ne cessent de croître au cours des dernières années, traduisant la volonté du Maroc à devenir un acteur majeur dans le développement du continent africain. Ce Policy Brief présente dans un prem ...
  • Authors
    January 25, 2017
    In previous pieces, we have analyzed the run up to the still-ongoing Brazilian recession as a combination of factors. Given an “anemia” of productivity increases, an appetite for public spending without prioritization led to a condition of fiscal “obesity”. The external factors that provided for a boom in the new millennium, notwithstanding underlying vulnerabilities, have dissipated. The economic policy adopted as a response to the growth decline aggravated those vulnerabilities. O ...
  • Authors
    January 12, 2017
    While energy products are clearly at the heart of geopolitical relations, other commodities should be taken into account to explain certain changes in the international economic and political environment. This is the case for steel since the 19th century. What about today? In a context of sluggish domestic demand, the considerable expansion of Chinese production and exports weigh heavily on the health of steelmakers, which are "historic" producers. Antidumping measures have thus bee ...
  • Authors
    Thomas Awazu Pereira da Silva
    January 2, 2017
    This year, under the patronage of His Majesty King Mohammed VI, the OCP Policy Center (OCPPC) - in collaboration with the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMFUS) - hosted and organized the fifth Atlantic Dialogues, gathering over 300 high-level international public- and private-sector leaders from the Atlantic Basin to discuss cross-regional issues ranging from economic and social development, security and trade, to migration, resources, and energy. This year’s event, loca ...
  • December 30, 2016
    This podcast is presented by Pr. Eduardo Amaral Haddad. Specialist in regional economics, the professor deliver his thoughts about the relevance of developing a spatial tool in morocco, i ...
  • Authors
    Vera Songwe
    December 23, 2016
    Regional economic integration across the world accelerates growth and development by bringing a wide array of benefits associated with enhanced political cooperation, increased intra-regional trade, and job creation. Regions that are more integrated have proven to grow faster and have shown greater resilience in times of global economic downturns. As the world economy struggles to return to the high growth levels of a decade ago, stimulating internal and regional growth has become t ...
  • Authors
    Onasis Tharcisse A. Guedegbe
    December 23, 2016
    Trade integration is a prerequisite for the success of any economic integration project. The factors hindering trade integration therefore constitute a bottleneck to the economic integration project of the countries of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which is an effective means of coping with the substantial expansion of sub-regional food demand. The aim of this paper is to highlight the factors that constrain trade flows and increase the cost of trade in the ...
  • Authors
    Vera Songwe
    December 23, 2016
    Partout dans le monde, l'intégration économique régionale permet d'accélérer la croissance et le développement en apportant une panoplie d'avantages liés à une meilleure coopération politique, à un commerce intra-régional accru et à la création d'emplois. Les régions qui sont plus intégrées se sont révélées capables de connaître une croissance plus rapide et ont fait preuve d'une plus grande capacité d'adaptation en période de ralentissement de l'économie mondiale. Alors que l'écono ...
  • Authors
    Onasis Tharcisse A. Guedegbe
    December 23, 2016
    L'intégration commerciale est une condition de réussite de tout projet d’intégration économique. Les facteurs entravant cette intégration commerciale sont donc un goulot d’étranglement au projet d’intégration économique des pays de la Communauté Economique des Etats de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (CEDEAO), projet qui constitue un moyen efficace de faire face à la forte expansion de la demande alimentaire sous régionale. Cet article vise à mettre en lumière les facteurs contraignant la flui ...
  • December 19, 2016
    En un tiers de siècle, la Chine, pays en développement, est devenue une économie émergente, puis une puissance économique mondiale. Il s’agit là du principal évènement économique du début du XXIe siècle. Cet évènement interpelle le Maroc, le Maghreb, l’Afrique et l’espace sudméditerranéen, parce qu’il est porteur d’un second dépassement historique, provenant, cette fois, non pas de l’Occident, mais de la Chine lointaine pourtant tellement présente dans notre quotidien. Répondre à c ...