Otaviano Canuto on the Middle-Income Trap

May 19, 2021

Otaviano Canuto, Senior fellow, Policy Center for the New South 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. We need to approach middle-income countries as being in a complex transition phase between accumulation and innovation-based economies. Individual middle-income country experiences of falling into a “trap” may be approached as cases of lack of or failing performance in footing the bill in terms of appropriate policies and institutions.

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

  • February 10, 2025
    Depuis 1956, l’économie égyptienne est en crise. Durant la période entre 1956 et 2024, elle a connu douze dévaluations et huit crises majeures de sa balance des paiements. Avec un déficit récurrent de sa balance courante, le pays est exposé au plus grand des risques : le risque souverain. Ce qui est une première faiblesse. Mais ce pays, qui a toujours réussi à s’épargner ce risque, témoigne aussi de certaines forces, ce qui constitue sa première force. De ce constat est ...
  • Authors
    Paul Isbell
    February 6, 2025
    Pan-Atlantic cooperation is inspired by the opportunity to foster rising, widespread, and sustainable prosperity across Atlantic Basin societies, particularly in Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). The key to unlocking this potential lies in deepening the Atlantic Basin’s already high level of intra-regional economic interdependence (when viewed as a single regional entity) and leveraging the untapped complementary opportunities within and across the Southern Atlantic. ...
  • January 30, 2025
    This Opinion was originally published in Project Syndicate   As the world prepares for COP30 in Belém, Brazil, African countries have an opportunity to advocate for equitable carbon-pricing mechanisms that align climate action with sustainable development. While cutting emissions is important, so, too, is ensuring fairness and equity for the communities most vulnerable to climate change. ...
  • January 30, 2025
    In this episode of Redesigning Global Finance, we explore the evolving landscape of global financial governance, focusing on how institutions like the IMF, World Bank, and regional development banks are adapting to new economic realities and global crises. The episode examines how finan...
  • January 29, 2025
    This Opinion was originally published in Project Syndicate   In today's global economy, developing countries must embrace a new policy framework that strengthens their macroeconomic resilience, harnesses technology for productivity growth, and fosters growth and structural transformation. None of this will be possible with an "every country for itself" mentality. ...
  • Authors
    January 27, 2025
    As geopolitical competition among superpowers intensifies, fragmenting the global economy and financial system, the role of middle powers has attracted much attention from policymakers and analysts. While there is no generally agreed list of middle powers, the term is intuitively understandable and has been used widely as referring to countries ranked below a handful of great powers, but significant enough to be able to act in response to external stimuli with some agency and with s ...
  • Authors
    Inácio F. Araújo
    Dina N. Elshahawany
    João Gabriel Sacco
    Maria Carolina Rogelis-Prada
    Antonios Pomonis
    Guillermo Toyos
    Hogeun Park
    January 22, 2025
    This study evaluates the economic costs for three Egyptian coastal cities of catastrophic flooding resulting from either sea-level rise or intense rainfall. Using a computable general equilibrium (CGE) framework, we assess the higher-order impacts of physical capital loss on both regional and national economies. Leveraging global flood hazard maps for various scenarios and return periods, and a 100-meter-resolution buildings-exposure model, which estimates the replacement value of r ...
  • Authors
    Arkebe Oqubay
    January 20, 2025
    This paper, included in the report "Urban Sustainable Development: Governance, Finance and Politics.", was originally published on:https://cebri.org/en/doc/356/cebri-and-rio-g20-committee-publish-urban-sustainable-development-governance-finance-and-politics  © Vormittag, Pedro, Marianna Albuquerque & Eugénie Birch (Eds.). 2024. Urban Sustainable Development: Governance, Finance and Politics. Rio de Janeiro: CEBRI.   The article discusses the role of sustainable and productive ...
  • January 20, 2025
    في هذه الحلقة، تم استعراض التحديات التي واجهت التنمية المالية في دول الخليج وكيفية التغلب عليها. كما تم مناقشة دور المؤسسات المالية في تعزيز تنويع الاقتصاد في دول مجلس التعاون الخليجي، بالإضافة إلى طرق تحسين البنية التحتية المالية لدعم الاقتصاد غير النفطي. استضافت الحلقة إسلام عبد البار...