DAY 1 - The 18th Annual Conference of the Arab Society for Economic Research

On the eve of Britain’s exit from the European Union, the country is redefining its international approach. The United Kingdom has already taken action by becoming involved in new economic commitments, new trade agreements in Commonwealth countries but also from a diplomatic point of view in West Africa. While development aid remains a focal point of its intervention in Africa, it risks being undermined by the Brexit and its economic consequences. However, the United Kingdom is now ...

The trade tensions between the United States and China will cause only minor immediate damage to their giant economies. However, tariffs have important and diverse effects on individual sectors and cause heightened uncertainty. The main adverse effects on Sub-Saharan Africa will therefore be through global investor confidence, economic growth and commodity prices, and these effects could be severe if the dispute escalates further and endangers the rules-based trading system. The tra ...

Throughout my last 15 years working in multilateral institutions, many times around the world I was asked to speak about the success of poverty reduction in Brazil during the new millennium. Last week, someone who was on such an occasion in October 2013 in Nairobi asked me what my numbers had become after these recent years of precarious macroeconomic performance and high unemployment in the country. I replied that they have changed ... in part! Indeed, the fact that, even without ...

Sur quelles contraintes faut-il anticiper lorsqu’on évoque la croissance de l’Afrique? Comment guider les décideurs politiques dans les priorités à définir pour piloter l’économie et arriver à bon port dans le monde qui vient? Le séminaire organisé le 11 avril à Paris par le PCNS et le Centre de développement de l’OCDE a apporté des éléments de réponse. La discussion s’est ouverte en prenant appui sur le rapport de référence publié en 2018 par l’Union africaine et l’OCDE sur les “D ...

This policy brief (PB), prepared for the G-20 Working Group on Trade, aims to provide decision-makers with a succinct review of the state of the trading system, to point to likely scenarios, and to serve as a background to or reference for the other six PBs prepared by the T20 Task Force on Trade, Investment and Globalization. The brief argues that the world trading system has been remarkably successful in many respects but that the present strain reflects causes which are deep-seat ...

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 ...