Macroeconomics and regulation

The report will soon be available for purchase.   The 2024 Annual Report on the African Economy is dedicated to monetary and financial issues on the Continent. There are three reasons for this choice. African economies are exposed to macro-financial instabilities partly generated by global monetary and financial turbulence. The Continent’s currencies and financial systems are engaged in very different dynamics, where routine methods and daring, if not risky, practices coexist. ...

Most high-income countries will experience declines in their populations over the next few decades. Some negative consequences of aging are on the horizon: greater fiscal imbalances and risks of economic stagnation. Immigration may by a way for those countries to mitigate the tendency. On the source side of immigration flows, brain drain is a risk. The policy paper presents the case of Japan, a nation that has grappled with the consequences of a declining and aging population fo ...

Depuis 2016, on assiste à une dynamique de création de fonds souverains africains. En 2023, on recense 21 pays et 24 fonds souverains. Sur la seule période 2016-23, celle de la deuxième vague, huit pays vont se doter d’un premier fonds souverain, et d’un deuxième, dans le cas du Maroc, en 2022. Cette étude rappelle tout d’abord l’historique d’une création qui commence, dès 1994, au Botswana, avec le Pula Fund, précisant pour chacun des 24 fonds leur date de création, leur ...

A 2023 United Nations progress report (UN, 2023) showed that, of the 169 targets that make up the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), only 15% are on track, and progress on many has either stalled or regressed. The Water-Energy-Food nexus approach has highlighted the utmost importance of understanding the interconnections between systems in order to accelerate the achievement of the SDGs. In this policy brief, we use the lessons learned from the water sector through a case study f ...

The debate on global value chains (GVCs) has emphasized countries’ contributions to value-added creation. From an intercountry perspective, a new body of research is addingto this debate by studying how subnational regions contribute to the indicators in specific countries. Proper assessment of economic contributions is essential for designing incentive policies. This paper analyzes the role played by the main trading partners of Moroccan regions in local value chains. We use input- ...

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched by Xi Jinping, passed its tenth anniversary in 2023. It has entered a third phase. The initiative added a label to China’s financing and construction of infrastructure abroad, which had already totaled more than $400 billion in the previous 10 years. In addition to the use of investment projects as part of Chinese ‘soft power’, the BRI has served to increase levels of usage of the country’s excess installed capacity. China’s economic re ...

This Chapter was originally published on Cape Town Chronicles   The history of debt in Africa is a long and painful one. It began in the 1980s, when the public finances of most developing countries deteriorated following two episodes of oil shocks, leading to a "lost decade" of low growth, increased poverty, and political instability. The recovery from the debt crisis only became possible following initiatives in favour of heavily indebted poor countries (HIPC) and the Multilatera ...

Multiple shocks faced by the global economy over the past three years have apparently shaken the conventional wisdom on gains from economic integration, and have sparked widespread calls for protectionist and nationalist policies. Is there already evidence of some ‘deglobalization’, or do the factors that underlie globalization remain strong enough despite the shocks? So far, there are no signs of an overall reversal in the long-term trend of greater global trade integration. Howev ...

The role of the production network in shock propagation has been an issue of considerable interest since the Great Recession. However, the empirical literature has only focused on advanced and emerging countries. This paper aims to contribute to filling this gap by examining the case of Morocco, a developing country belonging to the lower-middle-income group. The question is whether its production network is a factor in amplifying idiosyncratic industry-level shocks or, conversely, ...

The Brazilian economy is stuck in a so-called middle-income trap—growth that stalled long before Brazil caught up with the living standards of the highly industrialized countries. After exhibiting a stellar performance in the decades before the 1980s, the economy has since been unable to sustain growth for long periods. The predicament can be summarized using a medical analogy: Brazil has been suffering from both productivity anemia and public sector bloat. On the one hand, it hasn ...

The surprising victory of Javier Milei, the unconventional ‘anarcho-capitalist’ candidate, in the August primaries ahead of Argentina’s October 2023 general election, can be largely credited to his commitment to dollarize the Argentine economy, a move perceived as the ultimate solution to bring an end to the nation's economic turmoil. The potential shift from the local currency to the dollar has sparked concerns about Argentina's bilateral currency swap line with China. This swap l ...

Cette édition du Rapport économique de l’Afrique est construite autour d’une thématique d’une grande actualité : les conséquences des incertitudes et des risques aussi bien sanitaires que climatiques et sécuritaires sur les économies du continent. L’exercice est d’autant plus légitime que la recomposition de l’ordre mondial questionne la place du continent à l’échelle planétaire, sur les plans économique, social et environnemental. L’économie mondiale est confrontée à des défis glo ...

Base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) involving multinational companies is a complex, multi-dimensional problem resulting from loopholes and inconsistencies between countries’ tax systems. Addressing it requires coordinated action at the international level. Several organizations have taken initiatives in this direction, including the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which, with the support of the G20, launched an ambitious project to combat BEPS in 2 ...

The COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine have reignited the debate on efficiency versus resilience in international trade and global value chains (GVCs). This policy brief[a] (i) explains the contrasting perspectives of the private sector (primarily seeking efficiency) and the public sector (aiming for resilience); (ii) demonstrates that GVCs are still flourishing, despite some mounting signals of a geo-fragmentation leading to greater reallocation of the GVCs; and (iii) provide ...

This policy brief was originally published on T20 India website   A decade of poor growth, increased poverty, and political instability followed the serious debt difficulties that emerged worldwide in the 1980s. There are concerns that the looming debt crisis could create similar challenges and result in even more severe consequences. However, the current economic climate differs in many ways from that of the 1980s, when international banks and Paris Club creditors held most of th ...

This Policy Brief examines the current banking crisis in the United States and its implications for Africa. Many studies have pointed out the main factors responsible for this crisis, including poor risk-management practices in the failed banks, the sector’s weak regulatory structure, and the failure of bank supervisors. However, a key factor that has contributed to the extent and speed of the crisis is the U.S. Federal Reserve’s (Fed) policy actions, including the elimination of re ...

The current banking crisis in the United States began with the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) run in March 2023 and was followed by other bank failures, raising concerns about the health and stability of the financial sector. This Policy Paper traces the root causes of these bank failures and examines the U.S. monetary policy decisions during this period. These bank failures were caused by the poor risk management practices of the failed banks, the sector’s weak regulatory structure, and ...

Earlier this month, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told congressional leaders that the government could run out of cash as early as June 1, if the debt ceiling is not raised in time. In January, the Treasury reached the current legally established ceiling in nominal terms ($31.46 trillion). The funds currently available to make government payment flows tend to exhaust by the end of this month. According to the Treasury Department: “Failing to increase the debt limit would ha ...

Le Policy Center for the New South (PCNS) et le Fonds Monétaire International (FMI) ont organisé, le 28 avril, à Rabat, une table ronde d'experts sur le thème "Fighting Inflation and Building Resilience : the Outlook for MENA and Morocco". Au niveau international, la lutte contre l’inflation constitue la principale préoccupation des politiques économiques dans la majorité des pays. La détection des risques inflationnistes a pris du retard après la crise sanitaire parce que les aut ...

This paper aims to investigate the impact of an inflation targeting framework adoption by the central bank, on the reduction of public debt ratios in emerging countries, through the potential discipline-enhancing effect of inflation targeting on the conduct of fiscal policy in general. The impact evaluation method used is the Propensity Score Matching (PSM), which allows the evaluation of the treatment effect of inflation targeting on fiscal discipline, in terms of public debt reduc ...

Recent initiatives and policy moves by China and other countries to extend the reach of use of the renminbi in the international monetary system, while the U.S. dollar share in global reserves has slightly shrunk in relative terms, have sparked frequent discussions about a hypothetical “de-dollarization” of the global economy. We approach here what that would mean in terms of global currency functions as means of payment and store of value. While we point out a relative decline of ...

The Policy Center for the New South and the Economic Research Forum held on March 20 a workshop titled ‘Stabilization and adjustment towards inclusive and sustainable policies in MENA: The Moroccan case study’. The event took place at the PCNS headquarters in Rabat, Morocco. It brought together renowned Moroccan economists and scholars to discuss the issue of public debt sustainability in the context of the Moroccan economy. It was an occasion to revisit the main features of the Mor ...

Davantage qu'un acte de piété personnelle, le Ramadan est un phénomène éminemment social. Il renvoie à des dimensions complexes : de religion, de solidarité, d’éthique et aussi d’économie. Le jeûne du mois de Ramadan est évidemment l'une des obligations rituelles de l'Islam. Mais, plus que religieux (qui renvoie à l'institutionnalisation et l'objectivation), le Siyam est un fait spirituel (qui renvoie davantage à l’individuation et la subjectivation). Il donne lieu à des prières sur ...

In 2010, when I was one of the vice presidents at the World Bank, colleagues I and published a very upbeat book  about the possibility of emerging and developing economies replacing advanced countries as engines of global economic growth. While the latter would be grappling with the aftermath of the global financial crisis, the former, already growing at a faster pace in the previous decade and accounting for more than half of the annual increases in global GDP, had largely shown an ...

This paper was originally published as a chapter within the Book, Foreign Exchange Constraint and Developing Economies, published on January 2023 (ISBN  978 1 80088 049 8).   The decade after the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2007–2009 saw signifi- cant changes in the volume and composition of capital flows in the global economy. Portfolio investments and other non-bank financial intermediaries (NBFIs) are behind an increasing share of foreign capital flows, while bank- ing flo ...

This Paper was originally published on tandfonline.com   It has been recognised that the fiscal multiplier is a function of structural features of the economy and policy reaction parameters. Moreover, the debate on the magnitude of the multiplier along the business cycle has also been the subject of disputed debates. On these grounds, we look at the Greek case by calibrating a NUTS-2 interregional general equilibrium model using data for distinct states of the Greek economy during ...

Three significant changes to the macroeconomic policy regime in advanced economies, compared to the post-global financial crisis period, have unfolded in the last two years. First, fears of a chronic insufficiency of aggregate demand as a growth deterrent prevailing after the 2008 global financial crisis, have been superseded by supply-side shocks and inflation. Second, as a result of the first change, the era of abundant and cheap liquidity provided by central banks has given way t ...

L’objectif de ce papier est d’essayer d’examiner si l’implémentation du cadre de ciblage de l’inflation par la banque centrale, permet une réduction de la dette publique dans les pays émergents, à travers l'effet disciplinant du ciblage sur la conduite de la politique budgétaire en général. Pour ce faire, la méthode d’évaluation d’impact utilisée est l’appariement par score de propension ou Propensity Score Matching (PSM), qui permet l’évaluation de l’effet de traitement ...

En Afrique, le niveau de la vulnérabilité économique des pays reste élevé et représente un obstacle à la croissance économique et à la réduction de la pauvreté. Ce constat nous mène à étudier cette problématique pour un échantillon des pays africains les plus exposés aux chocs économiques. En effet, ce travail a pour objectif principal d’identifier les effets des composantes des deux indicateurs de vulnérabilité et de résilience économique sur le niveau de reve ...

The US dollar has risen dramatically in value against other currencies recently. Three channels through which factors affecting bilateral exchange rates operate have been pulling up the U.S. dollar: yield differentials, liquidity differentials, and growth differentials. The strong appreciation of the US dollar against other currencies recently reinforced the contractionary pressures present in the global economy. Ultimately, the “turn” or “pivot” of the dollar will most likely occur ...

In the chaotic global post-COVID-19 economy, with the ongoing war in Ukraine, the challenge of adjusting to the global stagflation that is engulfing the world is particularly hard for the oil importing countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. A regional commission of experts, working under the auspices of the Economic Research Forum (ERF), and the Finance for Development Lab (FDL), was asked to evaluate the macro-economic risks ahead, and to make recommendations ...

The pandemic has hit Latin America hard, and its economic recovery has been slower than in other regions. In addition to the legacy of higher public indebtedness, the pandemic left scars on the labor market and the human capital formation of future workers. The COVID-19 crisis has receded in Latin America but has left a significant toll. Reported deaths from the pandemic are currently low and converging to global levels. The average excess mortality during the pandemic was among t ...

En attribuant le prix Nobel d'économie 2022 à Ben S. Bernanke, Douglas W. Diamond et Philip H. Dybvig, le jury Nobel a voulu distinguer des travaux, remontant aux années 1980, qui permettent de mieux comprendre l'implication des banques dans les crises. Travaux pionniers, également, dans l'élaboration d'une théorie bancaire, où l'analyse historique est présente avec Ben S. Bernanke qui a longuement étudié le rôle des banques dans la crise de 1929, afin de ne pas renouveler les erreu ...

There is an international movement to tighten monetary and fiscal policies as a response to the global inflation phenomenon. Accordingly, global economic growth projections for 2022 and 2023 have been revised downward. As inflation will decline only gradually, given the price stickiness of its core components, there is likely to be momentarily a situation of stagflation, i.e. a combination of significant inflation and low or negative GDP growth. We discuss how the current global s ...

“The debate on the viability of industrial policy design based on the fragmentation of global value chains, from a cost optimization perspective, did not arise first in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis but was present long before. This industrial policy design was justified by the great development of logistics and transport across the world’s industrial clusters, which allowed just-in-time manufacturing to become the main adopted production model. However, the disruption of logistic ...

La succession des chocs pandémique, climatique et géopolitique a éprouvé les économies africaines. Les liens commerciaux et financiers avec le monde ne sont plus seulement considérés comme des moteurs de performance, mais aussi comme des sources potentielles de vulnérabilité. La défiance à l’égard de la mondialisation s’est accrue. Parce qu’elle est venue souligner la dépendance du continent, le dérèglement de ses rapports à la nature et sa vulnérabilité face aux tensions géopolitiq ...

Chinese economic figures released since August’s beginning have shown a slowdown in its growth. New Omicron coronavirus outbreaks in the context of the Covid-zero policy, the housing slump and heat waves have been, decelerating the economy’s pace. China’s current growth slowdown is an additional step in the trajectory of gradually declining rates that has accompanied the “great rebalancing” since the beginning of the 2010s. One significant difference now is the perception of exhaust ...

Cet ouvrage est conçu pour les étudiants de Master en Sciences économiques. Il peut également être utile pour les doctorants dans ce domaine. Il présente les applications des différentes méthodes économétriques sous le logiciel R. C’est pour cette raison qu’il commence par un court chapitre de présentation de R et des données macroéconomiques de la Banque mondiale (BM) pouvant être utilisées pour l’estimation de différents modèles. Le manuel se divise par la suite ...

Depuis l’année 2015, le Maroc a fait de la régionalisation avancée un choix stratégique pour concrétiser sa volonté politique de mettre en œuvre une approche de développement territorial plus intégrée. Cette initiative vise à assurer un développement territorial durable, robuste et inclusif mais aussi à capitaliser sur les potentialités de chaque région en termes de ressources. Ainsi, de nouvelles structures ont été mises en place pour moderniser les services publics et améliorer le ...

For today’s middle-income countries in Africa, innovation is essential to sustain growth and promote the transition to high-income status. This paper begins by providing an in-depth review of the region’s innovation performance during the last three decades. A distinction is made between residents and non-residents, and outcomes at different income levels. Using cross-country regressions, we then study the determinants of innovation and assess the impact of innovation on growth in t ...

In its May 15th meeting, the Federal Open Market Committee of the U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed) lifted its benchmark policy rate by 0.75% to 1.50%–1.75%, the biggest increase since 1994. The central bank also signaled an additional increase of 0.75% ahead. FOMC members also raised the median projection for the Fed funds rate to a range between 3.25% and 3.50% next year. In addition to hikes in basic interest rates, liquidity conditions in the US economy will also be affected by the sh ...

La question de la mise en œuvre du projet de monnaie unique de la CEDEAO a encore été au centre des discussions entre les chefs d’État de la CEDEAO lors de leur 57ème session ordinaire, tenue à Niamey le 7 septembre 2020, et lors de laquelle ils ont décidé pour diverses raisons un nouveau report à une date ultérieure, après ceux de 2003, 2005, 2009 et 2015. Les chefs d’État ont aussi évoqué l’élaboration d’une « nouvelle feuille de route », sans toutefois déterminer u ...

The world food price index collected for the last 60 years by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) hit its highest record in March, declining gently in April. Pandemic, war and death in Ukraine, and droughts in the last 2 years… Such a combination looks apocalyptical. Now it is adding global hunger risks, because of the food price crisis. The rise in global food prices started in mid-2020 because supply chain disruptions triggered food stockpiling. Mobility r ...

Following on the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic and severe drought in North Africa, the Russian invasion of Ukraine – large exporters of food and, in the case of Russia, energy— may inflict increased hunger on the food insecure in Morocco – despite mitigating measures by the government. Morocco is so far successfully shielding its large poor and vulnerable population by subsidizing essential commodities. With memories of the violent protests during the 2007/08 food and fuel crisis s ...

Emerging market and developing economies (EMDE) face a common set of external shocks: rising energy and food prices; tightening in global financial conditions caused by the prospect of sharper interest rate hikes and anticipation of "quantitative tightening"; and return of restrictions on mobility in China, on account of the Covid zero policy, leading to slumping in growth and weakening one of the primary growth drivers for the other EMDE. However, the impacts of those common shocks ...

The war in Ukraine is bringing substantial financial, commodity price, and supply chain shocks to the global economy. Sanctions on Russia are already having a significant impact on its financial system and its economy. Price shocks will have a global impact. Energy and commodity prices—including wheat and other grains—have risen, intensifying inflationary pressures from supply chain disruptions and the recovery from the pandemic. The push toward relative deglobalization received fro ...

COVID-19 has ravaged nearly every country in the world, with the globalization of recent decades intensifying its spread. As of mid-2021, the world had spent $16.5 trillion—18% of global GDP—to fight the disease. And that amount does not even include the most important losses such as deaths, mental health effects, restrictions on human freedom, and other nonmonetary suffering. Nearly 90% of this spending was by developed economies, with the rest by emerging market and developing eco ...

On January 28, both Argentina’s government and the International Monetary Fund staff made announcements about an understanding on new support program. Meanwhile, in addition to the payment of an amortization due on January 28, another payment is also expected in the first week of February. Both payments relate to the previous package, approved in 2018 and substantially disbursed thereafter. Non-payment could sour relations at a critical moment for a new program to be approved by the ...

The Policy Center for The New South (PCNS) joined an inter-institutional effort between the Ibero-American General Secretariat (SEGIB), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in an international research project called ‘’Purpose-driven companies and the regulation of the Fourth Sector in Ibero-America’’. As this project grew to cover countries outside of Ibero-America, the PCNS was invited to write a chapter about the M ...

The research project “Purpose-driven companies and the regulation of the Fourth Sector in Ibero- America” is part of an inter-institutional effort involving the Ibero-American General Secretariat (SEGIB), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). The project has its origin in the results of a previous research developed by SEGIB (Fourth Sector companies and the SDGs in Ibero-America, 2020), through which we analyzed the i ...

Between January 2020 and June 2021, the world spent about US $16.5 trillion (18% of world GDP) to fight COVID-19, and this amount does not even include the most important losses such as deaths, mental health effects, restrictions on human freedom, and other nonmonetary suffering. Nearly 90% of this amount was spent by developed economies; the rest by emerging market and developing economies. Low-income countries spent just US $12.5 billion, or less than 0.0001% of the total. Moreove ...

Since its very beginning in 2011, the Middle East and Deep Maghreb have been a fundamental priority for the Foundation. As this year marks the 10th anniversary of the Arab uprisings, our Dossier wants to provide a meaningful understanding of the future dynamics of an area that, despite several positive attempts, is still affected by major instability. Gathering the perspectives of a pool of distinguished regional and international analysts, this publication dives into the socio-econ ...

A slowdown in China and winding down of U.S. stimulus threaten a much-needed regional rebound. First appeared at Americas Quarterly The last year has seen some good news for Latin American economies. The region’s recovery has been stronger than expected, and growth forecasts by the World Bank and IMF have improved since six months ago. Vaccination campaigns and fiscal support have sparked an economic rebound since the second half of last year, despite an apparent loss of momentum ...

Mounting inflation in the major financial centers have raised concerns about the consequences on macroeconomic stability, including the Central Bank response they might trigger. In line with official views, we argue that inflation will probably wind down. We show that core inflation remains below pre-Covid levels in most large economies. We also argue that emerging markets are now less prone to “sudden stop” phenomena, in part because many have already started the exit from accommod ...

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a shock to both demand and supply, leading to the biggest collapse in world output since the Great Depression. Since late 2020, a more rapid than expected recovery has been observed. Five questions arise frequently. Here is my take on those questions. 1- Is the pandemic receding? No, but we have a vaccine to control it, and are better at managing it with selective measures, as distinct from total lockdowns, which kill the economy. The global number of ...

The world woke on Monday August 23 to higher international reserves for all countries. A new allocation of US$650 billion in Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to its member countries had entered into force (SDR450 billion). SDRs are an international reserve asset created by the IMF and added to countries' other foreign reserves. It is not a currency that can be used by private agents. Governments, on the other hand, can unconditionality exchan ...

Macroeconomic dynamics in the U.S. economy has increasingly become associated with asset price fluctuations in the past few decades. Financial conditions have increasingly become an influential factor shaping the cyclical pace of the macroeconomy. There has been a mismatch between rising financial wealth and the pace of creation and incorporation of new assets. Several secular stagnation hypotheses offer explanations for the insufficient creation of new assets. Public debt—and its p ...

The International Monetary Fund’s tenth annual External Sector Report (ESR, August 2021) shows how current account deficits in the global economy widened in 2020 during the pandemic. On the other hand, the ESR also argues that overall, the misalignment between fundamentals and current account balances has not been exacerbated. The pandemic widened current account imbalances… The sum of absolute values of current account deficits and surpluses went from 2.8% of global GDP in 2019 t ...

On July 21, the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF) published its eighth annual report on Global Public Investors (GPI). It included a survey the asset allocation plans of reserve managers of central banks, sovereign wealth funds, and public pension funds. Together, the 102 investors who responded to the survey manage $42.7 trillion in assets (Figure 1). Source: OMFIF analysis (GPI 2021).   The survey highlighted notable changes in the composition of portfol ...

This book aims to address job creation in Morocco in the context of a new export-driven growth model. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the unemployment situation in Morocco was serious, particularly among young people. Morocco’s competitive edge in the global market had been eroding, especially in labor-intensive, low-wage industries that typically create large numbers of jobs. The COVID-19 pandemic has created further setbacks to the economy in 2020 and beyond, including a collapse ...

First appeared at AMERICAS QUARTERLY A growing global imbalance threatens to further weaken already vulnerable emerging markets. The massive vaccine disparities between advanced and developing economies may exacerbate what the IMF has dubbed “divergent recoveries”—with dire consequences for Latin America. Despite being home to only 8% of the world’s population, the region has already suffered nearly 30% of all global COVID-19 deaths. The pandemic has also hit GDP and employment ha ...

China is the world's largest exporter of goods. It is also, by any plausible criterion, a developing country. China's dual status needs to be better reflected in Chinese policies - recognizing its global responsibilities -- and in those of the Western powers - recognizing China's limitations. Across three important agendas - macroeconomics, development assistance, and climate - important differences between China and the West remain, yet none of these issues appears intractable. ...

Commodity prices have recovered their 2020 losses and, in most cases, are now above pre-pandemic levels (Figure 1). The pace of Chinese growth since 2020 and the economic recovery that has accompanied vaccine rollouts in advanced companies are seen as driving demand upward, while supply restrictions for some items—oil, copper, and some food products—have favored their upward adjustment. Some analysts have started to speak of the possibility of a new commodity price ‘super-cycle’ aft ...

Les Dialogues Stratégiques, une collaboration entre HEC Center for Geopolitcs et Policy Center for the New South, représentent une plateforme d’analyse et d’échange biannuelle réunissant des experts, des praticiens, des décideurs politiques, ainsi que le monde universitaire et les médias au service d’une réflexion critique et approfondie sur les tendances politiques mondiales et les grandes questions d’importance commune pour l’Europe et l’Afrique. Cette publication est issue de la ...

The projections for United States GDP released by the Federal Reserve on March 17, pointed to a growth rate of 6.5% in 2021, well above December’s 4.2% forecast. Congressional approval of the Biden administration’s $1.9 trillion fiscal package and the vaccination march against COVID-19 explain the rise in the estimate. However, it should not be forgotten that growth in 2021 will follow a fall in GDP of 3.5% last year. While the expected unemployment rate at the end of 2021 is now 4 ...

Economic development analysis must inevitably rely on a double methodological standpoint. On the one hand, it needs to search for common features, those general attributes that might be present in all national experiences of wealth accumulation, poverty reduction, and moving up the income ladder. On the other, in order to be meaningful, it must reckon with time and space. It must consider that those universal development traits will play out in specific historical and geographical c ...

The monetary policy report submitted by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System to the U.S. Congress on Friday Feb. 19 showed that the Fed’s members have improved economic growth expectations for 2021 and 2022, expect lower unemployment rates. Meanwhile, only two of the 18 participants projected PCE (personal consumption expenditures) inflation to (slightly) exceed the 2% that serves as the longer-run objective for the monetary policy regime. In this context, is there ...

While the economic recovery around the world remains uneven, fragile, and unbalanced across sectors, financial markets are generally doing very well, thanks! In the United States, only half of the unemployment caused by the pandemic last year has been reversed, while stock markets continued to boom. Of course, this largely reflected the extraordinary support given by monetary authorities since March last year. As in the period after the 2007-08 global financial crisis, voices have ...

WASHINGTON-The December 2020 U.S. Treasury Report (hereafter referred to as the TR) to Congress singled out Vietnam and Switzerland as currency manipulators. In Vietnam’s case, it is surprising that the U.S. Treasury openly expressed its concerns about a country that graduated from the group of low-income countries only a few years ago. Additionally, Vietnam’s GDP per capita and total GDP are a fraction of the U.S.’s, but the country is assessed in the same way as developed countrie ...

According to this month’s OECD economic outlook, global GDP --- which took a huge hit from the pandemic and is still 3% below its level of a year ago – will not recover its pre-pandemic level until the end of 2021. In a downside scenario, the return could take almost a year longer. The OECD predictions, which imply high and protracted unemployment, are in line with the view of many other official and private organizations. The arrival of effective vaccines such as Pfizer-BioNTech wa ...

Le présent rapport a pour objet d’analyser les implications sur la croissance et le développement du Maroc de son insertion dans l’économie mondiale. Cette analyse est menée en comparant la dynamique économique observée après 1998 à celle qui l’a été avant. En effet, la période 1998-2018 est celle au cours de laquelle se sont manifestés les effets du choix acté et assumé politiquement de l’ouverture (ou du libre-échange, si on préfère). Pour avant, nous nous en tenons à la période 1 ...

Dès les premiers cas du Coronavirus relevés en Afrique, les prédictions les plus sombres ont été faites sur la catastrophe sanitaire à venir sur le continent, en raison d’un certain nombre de caractéristiques supposées favoriser la propagation de l’épidémie. Ces prévisions ont été démenties par la rapidité des ripostes des Etats et par divers autres facteurs. La progression de la Covid-19 en Afrique n’est pas le fait d’une dynamique unique mais plutôt de multiples profils de risques ...

This article was originally published on Bruegel  A recovery from the COVID-19 recession is underway though the suffering is far from over, especially for the most vulnerable. Inequality is both a consequence of the pandemic and a cause of its severity. Many countries need comprehensive policy change to address its worst effects. At the end of a tragic year marked by pandemic and increased poverty, the miraculously rapid arrival of vaccines stirs great hope. The COVID-19 recession ...

After reaching a peak against other currencies in March this year, the dollar fell by almost 15% until the beginning of December. According to Bloomberg, asset portfolio managers have been assuming "short" positions against the dollar, that is, betting on its fall ahead. The dollar is expected to devalue against the euro, the yen, and the Chinese RMB in 2021. The peak last March, during the coronavirus financial shock, reflected the search for a safe haven in short-term US bonds or ...

Avec du suspense jusqu’à la dernière minute, comme l’Union européenne (UE) aime le faire, le 10 décembre 2020 le Conseil européen a finalement donné son accord pour le budget de l’Union 2021-2027 (1,8 milliards d’euros[1]) et du Fonds de récupération et de relance pour faire face aux conséquences économiques et sociales de la Covid-19 dans les pays de l’UE. Le Fonds répartira entre les États membres 750 milliards d’euros entre 2021 et 2023 (sous le nom de « EU Next Generation »), 36 ...

Brazil is one of the countries hardest hit by COVID-19. Apart from the dramatic health implications, COVID-19 will also scar the Brazilian economy, including through a jump in its already high public-sector debt-to-GDP ratio in 2020. Moving forward—or not—with structural reforms aimed at lifting private investment will define whether a sustainableor unsustainable—growth-cum-debt trajectory will prevail in the next decade. The extent to which Brazil regains its attractiveness for for ...

The COVID-19 pandemic has hit the Moroccan economy hard, as elsewhere in the world. A collapse in external demand and a lockdown lasting more than three months have profoundly altered economic activity in Morocco, causing its first recession since 1995. The implementation of the confinement and social distancing measures was strict and came two weeks after the detection of the first cases of COVID-19 in Morocco on March 2, 2020. The lockdown was extended three times and lasted aroun ...

The pandemic is accelerating history, in the sense that it is leading to the speeding up of some recent trends. In the case of globalization, the pandemic will not reverse it, but it will reshape it. Here we take a bird’s eye view of global trade during the pandemic, relate it to previous trends, and guess how global value chain managers and government trade policymakers are likely to react. A Bird’s Eye View of Global Trade during the Pandemic World trade took a deep dive during ...

There was a significant inflow of funds in Brazil's external financial account in October and November for investments in both stocks and fixed income instruments. The bulk of the recent inflow has come in a “passive” way, and it did not include considerable volume on the side of “active” investors. For the wave to unfold in the availability of external resources to finance investments in the country, progress and confidence in the domestic fiscal and regulatory agenda will be relev ...

The effective implementation of the 2030 Agenda requires a greater level of capital mobilization and new institutional arrangements that guarantee the better allocation of these funds. Based on concrete results from the experience of the Development Bank of Minas Gerais, in Brazil, this paper argues that Subnational Development Banks (SDBs) can be powerful players within development finance institutions’ networks, as their local expertise can bring efficiency and effectiveness to th ...

We have previously discussed how, between March 2020, when the financial shock caused by COVID-19 occurred, and the end of August, the stock and corporate debt markets in the United States performed extraordinarily, despite gloomy prospects on the real side of the economy. The decline in technology stock prices in September ended up taking the equivalent of a month from gains starting in April, but prices remain high. On the basis of such a ‘disconnect from reality’ in financial ma ...

CGTN, 25 September 2020 China’s economy keeps recovering from the coronavirus pandemic-led crisis through the third quarter of 2020, as revealed by the numbers of August activity. Its GDP grew by 3.2% in the second quarter, after falling by 6.8% in the first quarter, in both cases as compared from a year before. It is now the only major economy expected to exhibit growth this year. Successful containment of the pandemics has allowed it to be first-in-first-out relative to others. ...

U.S. stock and corporate bond markets performed extraordinarily well from the March financial shock caused by covid-19 to the end of last month. Then, three consecutive weeks of decline in the three major stock market indexes have been followed this week by a global slump attributed to fears of new lockdowns. A period of disconnect of financial markets with the underlying real economy has culminated in a revelation of the former’s high dependency to Federal Reserve policies. Discon ...

Latin American and Caribbean economies need help, but organizations like the IDB are also stretched thin. First appeared at Americas Quarterly With Latin America and the Caribbean potentially facing years of difficulties due to the pandemic and related economic crises, attention has shifted to what multilateral institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) might do to help. There’s no doubt they can play a crucial role in preventing another lost decade in the region. But ...

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 accumulati ...

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) released, on August 4th, its ninth annual External Sector Report, where current account imbalances and asset-liability stocks of 30 systemically large economies are approached. This time the report went beyond looking the previous year and tried to anticipate what will be some of the impacts of the still on-going COVID-19 crisis. The report shows that the global economy entered the COVID-19 crisis with a configuration of external imbalances tha ...

La COVID-19 a asséné un puissant coup de massue à l’économie mondiale, en combinant une terrible pandémie à un effondrement de la production dû au confinement de la moitié de la population active mondiale. L’incertitude générée par le choc médical et économique paralyse les consommateurs et les investisseurs, et la dispersion des prévisions économiques à court terme est plus grande qu’elle ne l’a jamais été dans l’histoire moderne, environ six fois plus que lors de la grande crise f ...

The current pandemic has hit all countries hard, with severe repercussions at all levels. In economic terms, and given the scale of the damage, countries have reacted quickly by drawing on their available toolboxes. However, unlike in 2008, room for maneuver this time is much more limited and many countries have no choice but to go into massive debt to cope with the effects of the pandemic. For a country like Morocco, such a situation should lead the authorities concerned to study a ...

Depuis 2018, le Ghana est considéré par le Fonds monétaire international (FMI) comme le bon élève de l'Afrique. Bon élève dans le respect de la démocratie qui lui permet d'attirer de nombreux investisseurs mais, aussi, bon élève de par les résultats économiques obtenus pour réduire son inflation et relancer sa croissance économique, suite à un programme d'ajustement structurel, soutenu par le FMI, mis en place en 2015, et qui s'est achevé en 2019. Ces résultats, le Ghana les doit a ...

This article was originally published on Bruegel. The global economy is showing signs of recovery from the economic crisis caused by COVID-19, though the spread of the coronavirus is accelerating in some countries. In this circumstance, policymakers must weigh up the trade-offs involved in dealing with the pandemic while easing lock downs and sustaining economic activity. Differences in age structures, urbanisation rates and other factors will inform decision making in different co ...

There are signs of recovery in various parts of the global economy, starting in May, after the depressive dip imposed by Covid-19. Such signs emerged after the easing of restrictions on mobility established to flatten out the pandemic curves, and also reflected policies of flattening the recession curve (income transfers to part of the population, credit lines to vulnerable companies and others). Besides remaining far from giving back the GDP lost, in all countries, the recovery fa ...

Middle Eastern geopolitics is currently undergoing structural changes: the regional order is in transition in the aftermath of the Arab Spring that undermined authoritarian governance, and triggered the competition for power against a backdrop of American withdrawal. This new race for regional domination challenges the traditional hierarchy of powers that is mainly based on military capacity and the interplay of foreign alliances. The economy, which had previously guaranteed the pol ...

La transformation de la Communauté Economique des Etats de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (CEDEAO) en « confédération d’Etats » est parfois évoquée, y compris au niveau des Chefs d’Etat de la Communauté, comme une prochaine étape naturelle du processus d’approfondissement de l’intégration en Afrique de l’Ouest. La présente étude a pour objet d’en explorer la faisabilité et la pertinence, en se fondant sur l’expérience vécue dans d’autres continents. Une Confédération d’Etats peut être défini ...

Unless trade wars end around the globe, the world is headed for the biggest recession in living memory. The crisis arising from the coronavirus will hit fragile economies in Africa, the Pacific, and the Caribbean the hardest. At such a time, the world should be dropping barriers but, instead, new barriers are being built. In the past month, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened retaliation against India unless it released supplies of hydroxychloroquine. Worse still, he got his way ...

La réputation, concept majeur s’il en est, est un indicateur de l’estime accordée à une personne physique mais aussi à une entreprise ou encore à une entité étatique. Constituée d’une somme de perceptions, elle est la résultante globale de l’ensemble d’images, d’appréciations des actions et comportements de celles-ci. Ainsi, la bonne réputation d’un gouvernement est déterminée et mesurée par son aptitude à faire face aux épreuves que traverse le pays, à affronter les bouleversements ...

COVID-19 brought the global economy to a sudden stop, causing shocks to supply and demand. Starting in January 2020, country after country suffered outbreaks of the new coronavirus, with each facing epidemiological shocks that led to economic and financial shocks as a consequence. How quickly and to what extent will national economies recover after the pandemic has passed? This will depend on success in containing the coronavirus and on exit strategies, as well as on the effectivene ...

Three features of the post-pandemic global economy can already be anticipated: the worldwide rise in public and private debt levels, accelerated digitization, and a partial reversal of globalization. The first arises from the public sector's role as the ultimate insurer against catastrophes, government policies to smooth pandemic curves and the coronavirus recession. These will leave a legacy of massive public-sector debt worldwide (as discussed in a previous post. Lower tax revenue ...

Face à l’ampleur des retombées économiques et sociales des crises sanitaires, comme la Covid19, l’aide publique au développement peut jouer un rôle essentiel dans l’atténuation de l’impact des épidémies sur les économies les plus fragiles et vulnérables. L'aide publique au développement (APD) vise non seulement à combler le manque de capital nécessaire à amorcer une dynamique forte de développement, mais aussi à amorcer la capacité des Etats à répondre aux risques sanitaires et sécu ...

La pandémie actuelle a frappé de plein fouet l’ensemble des pays, avec des répercussions très lourdes à tous les niveaux. Au plan économique, et face à l’ampleur des dégâts, les Etats ont vite réagi en puisant dans leurs boites à outils disponibles. Toutefois, contrairement à 2008, les marges de manœuvre actuelles sont beaucoup plus réduites et de nombreux Etats n’ont d’autre choix que de s’endetter massivement pour faire face aux effets de la pandémie. Pour un pays, comme le Maroc, ...

تدور خطة العمل التي تم وضعها في مواجهة جائحة كوفيد 19 حول ثلاثة محاور: الصحة والاقتصاد والنظام الاجتماعي. وفي كل مجال من هذه المجالات، ساعدت مبادرات المؤسسات العامة والقطاع الخاص وأعضاء المجتمع المدني حتى الآن على الحد من أضرار الوباء على الصعيد الصحي، تسعى الجهود المبذولة إلى التحكم في انتشار المرض من أجل ضمان احتواء المنظومة الصحية لتدفق الحالات بشكل أفضل، خصوصا بالنظر إلى الموارد المحدودة والموزعة بشكل متفاوت على مستوى التراب الوطني. وقد تم إعطاء الأولوية في هذا السياق إلى الزيا ...

COVID-19 has delivered a powerful double punch to the chin of the global economy, combining a terrifying pandemic with a collapse in production because of the withdrawal into their homes of half the world’s workers. The uncertainty generated by the medical and economic shock is paralyzing consumers and investors, and the dispersion of short-term economic forecasts is far wider than at any time in modern history, about six times greater than during the Great Financial Crisis. The GD ...

Alors que commence le déconfinement de l'économie française, la grande inquiétude est de savoir comment éviter une « seconde vague » de l'épidémie. Parmi les nombreuses précautions et mesures à prendre, l’augmentation du nombre de tests et le traçage systématique des contacts sont les plus souvent mis en avant par les épidémiologistes. L'idéal serait de tester fréquemment tous les habitants du pays et ses visiteurs étrangers. Pour cela, il faudrait effectuer bien au-delà de 60 milli ...

An examination, inevitably bound to be broad in scope, of the economic and social implications for a country, in this case Morocco, of a sudden pandemic that has broken out in virtually most parts of the world, can only be a prelude to a broader and more comprehensive study to be undertaken in due course. For obvious reasons, especially as the current crisis induced by the primacy of health, could later evolve into a form of economic depression as various multifaceted aid and suppor ...

Un examen, nécessairement à grands traits, des incidences économiques et sociales pour un pays, en l’occurrence le Maroc, d’une soudaine pandémie qui s’est déclarée sur presque la plupart des régions de la planète, ne peut être qu’un simple prélude d’une large étude exhaustive à entreprendre le moment venu. Et ce pour des raisons évidentes, à savoir que la crise en cours induite par le primat du sanitaire, pouvant évoluer, ensuite, en une forme de dépression économique que divers pr ...

La pandémie qui frappe l’économie mondiale est souvent imputée exclusivement au Coronavirus. L’objet de ce “Brief “est de rappeler qu’avant l’explosion de la pandémie, affectant, à des degrés divers, cinquante pour cent de la population mondiale, l’économie mondiale était déjà très fragilisée par la guerre commerciale que se livrent, depuis de longs mois, Américains et Chinois, et par la guerre pétrolière opposant Américains, Saoudiens et Russes. C’est, donc, dans un contexte très p ...

Face à la pandémie du COVID-19, un plan d’action a été établi autour de trois axes : santé, économie et ordre social. Dans chacun de ces champs, le concours des institutions publiques, du secteur privé et des membres de la société civile a permis jusque-là de limiter les dégâts et d’avoir un certain contrôle sur la pandémie. Sur le plan sanitaire, l’intervention vise une maîtrise de la progression de la maladie pour une meilleure absorption des flux par le système de santé, aux moy ...

La transition politique de l’Égypte, depuis 2011, a été tout aussi turbulente que sa transition économique. Tous les efforts de l’Egypte post-Moubarak se sont articulés autour de la relance économique, la stabilisation macroéconomique et politique et du renforcement de la sécurité interne du pays. Suite à l’accord avec le Fonds monétaire international (FMI), en 2016, l’Egypte a mené plusieurs réformes économiques qui ont, pu relancer la croissance économique et donner des résultats ...

Dans le combat contre la pandémie du Covid-19, le Maroc a choisi de fermer ses frontières aériennes, maritimes et terrestres pour contenir la propagation du virus. En décrétant, par la suite, un confinement strict, les autorités actaient l’arrêt partiel de l’économie, avec la mise en place de mesures d’aide en faveur des catégories précaires et des entreprises rencontrant des difficultés sous la houlette du Comité de Veille économique (CVE). Le ralentissement de l’économie a conduit ...

We are entering an economic cycle with a changing nature of consumption focusing on necessities. It seems like the times of luxury, entertainment and vacations are over, at least until the discovery of a vaccine for COVID-19. The unfolding of the health crisis that we have been witnessing in Italy, Spain and other advanced economies will not be as severe as the economic crisis that the Coronavirus will unleash. The International Monetary Fund has been warning us that the financial ...

Les 20 et 21 février, les chefs d'État ou de gouvernement de l'Union européenne ont entamé la dernière phase de négociation du cadre financier pluriannuel 2021-2027 de l'UE, le budget de l'Union pour sept ans. Bien que ce Conseil européen ait peu progressé - une longue tradition à ce stade des négociations au sein de l'UE - les discussions se sont concentrées sur les réductions proposées des fonds structurels et des fonds de soutien à la politique agricole commune, et sur le solde n ...

Le Covidonomics est la branche de l’analyse économique qui s’intéresse aux mécanismes par lesquels la pandémie affecte les économies du monde ainsi que les réponses de politiques économiques qui puissent répondre aux défis inhérents à la propagation du Covid-19. */ La présente contribution propose des réponses de politiques économiques et sanitaires qui soient contextualisées suivant trois périodes. La crise sanitaire Covid-19, au même titre que l’angoissante question du changemen ...

The global reach of COVID-19 is now clear. In a short time, country after country has suffered outbreaks of the new coronavirus, with each facing a three-fold shock: epidemiologic, economic, and financial. In addition to dealing with their own local coronavirus outbreaks, emerging market and developing countries have faced additional shocks from abroad. Flattening pandemic curves saves lives The coronavirus crisis is primarily a public health issue, demanding containment policies ...

Covid-19 has a far-reaching impact and is imposing a slowdown on the world economy, raising fears of the worst consequences on production, jobs and the immediate future of developing economies. Fiscal and monetary authorities around the world are engaging in policies to support their economies with unprecedented funds and initiatives. The African continent, also affected by the pandemic, is pursuing courageous economic (fiscal and monetary) policies, but the main question is what ne ...

Using a Structural vector auto-regression analysis, this paper attempts to answer the question of the feasibility of a currency union in the Economic community of West African states (ECOWAS). The study focuses on a particular criterion of the theory of optimum currency area (OCA) i.e. the similarity of business cycles. The main results suggest important discrepancies between countries that are already within the WAEMU (CFA Franc) arrangement and countries that have their own arrang ...

La crise engendrée par le COVID-19 a bouleversé l’ordre de l’économie mondiale. Elle montre à quel point les économies sont très interdépendantes, vulnérables et ne sont pas préparées à faire face à un choc sanitaire de cette ampleur. Même les pays développés et les grandes puissances économiques mondiales en ont été très négativement impactés. Cependant, l’impact de cette pandémie est à géométrie variable et son issue dépendra de la capacité des Etats à réagir et à y faire face le ...

Illicit financial flows (IFFs) have become a serious threat to the attainment of global development goals. On February 28th, 2020, the President of the United Nations General Assembly, Tijjani Muhammad-Bande, and the President of ECOSOC, Mona Juul, have announced a high-level panel on international financial accountability, transparency, and integrity (FACTI) as a means to address this challenge, which inhibits financing for the Sustainable Development Goals. This paper provides an ...

Le Covid-19 marque les esprits et impose à l’économie mondiale un ralentissement qui fait craindre les pires conséquences sur la production, les emplois et sur le futur immédiat des économies en développement. Les autorités budgétaires et monétaires à travers le monde s’engagent dans des politiques de soutien aux économies, avec des fonds et des initiatives inédits. Le continent africain, également touché par la pandémie, mène lui aussi des politiques économiques courageuses (budgét ...

On February 20-21, the Heads of State or Government of the European Union began the last phase of negotiation of the EU’s Multiannual Financial Framework 2021-2027, the Union’s seven-year budget. Although that European Council made little progress—a long tradition at this stage of negotiations within the EU—discussions focused on the proposed reductions in structural funds and the funds to support the Common Agricultural Policy, and the resulting net balance of funds for each of the ...

La géopolitique du Moyen-Orient connaît aujourd’hui des changements structurels: l’ordre régional est en transition, dans le sillage des printemps arabes, qui ont ébranlé la gouvernance autoritaire et libéré la compétition de puissance, sur fond de retrait américain. Cette nouvelle course à la domination régionale remet en cause la hiérarchie traditionnelle des puissances, essentiellement fondée sur la capacité militaire et le jeu des alliances extérieures. L’économie, jusque-là gar ...

The Moroccan diaspora contributes in major ways to Morocco’s economic development. Moroccan migrants ease the country’s chronic unemployment and underemployment problems, send remittances, invest in the home country, and typically visit Morocco frequently as tourists. In addition to that migrants usually retain close links with Morocco, and help in less direct ways to forge trade and third-party investment links between Morocco and their host countries. Drawing on the relatively sma ...

The outbreak in China has already affected economic sectors in Latin America. Is there more to come? China’s economy has come to a sudden stop. Large parts of the country remain in shutdown mode after the end of the Lunar New Year holiday, with national passenger traffic declining by 85% on the Wednesday after the break compared to 2019.   Outside of China, the impact of the slowdown has already been felt, with companies like Apple and Land Rover warning of lower production, as pa ...

En distinguant trois économistes reconnu(e)s pour leurs travaux sur l'approche de la pauvreté, les Nobel 2019 ont redonné ses lettres de noblesse à l'économie du développement. Mais, cette nomination c'est aussi la validation d'une méthode d'analyse, jusqu'alors essentiellement utilisée en médecine, méthode d'expérimentation aléatoire, encore appelée randomisation. C'est, donc, un nouveau tournant que prend la recherche économique, celui d'une démarche empirique commencée il y a une ...

- There are three possible justifications for central banks to engage with climate change issues: financial risks, macroeconomic impacts, and mitigation/adaptation policies. - Regardless of the extent to which individual central banks take action in each of the three areas, they can no longer ignore climate change. Last year, extreme weather events associated with climate change – floods, violent storms, droughts, and forest fires –occurred on all inhabited continents. In at least ...

In the context of his role as chair of the T20 task force « Trade, Investment and Globalization », our senior fellow, Uri Dadush has led the T20 brief under the theme "World Trading System Under Stress: Scenarios for the Future", which has been published in Global Policy. The world trading system has been remarkably successful in many respects but is now under great strain. The causes are deep‐seated and require a strategic response. The future of the system depends critically on r ...

Les relations économiques entre la Corée et l’Afrique ont commencé à se développer à compter de 2006, année qui a marqué un tournant avec le lancement de l’année de l’amitié avec l’Afrique et l’Initiative coréenne pour le développement de l’Afrique. Aujourd’hui, bien que les flux d’aide coréenne à destination de l’Afrique soient en constante augmentation celle-ci reste un partenaire économique de second rang pour Séoul. Ni le commerce, ni les investissements directs étrangers (IDE) ...

Depuis 2000, selon une approche et un calendrier qui ont été maintes fois modifiés, les 15 membres de la Communauté Économique des États de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (CEDEAO) ont exprimé leur volonté d’accélérer le processus d’intégration monétaire dans la région. Le récent débat autour de la Zone franc et sa réforme, désormais décidée avec la France, mais également l’enthousiasme manifesté autour de la création de la Zone de libre-échange continentale (ZLEAf) formellement créée le 30 ma ...

Emerging market and developing economies: Engine of the global economic growth despite some vulnerabilities1 After a long spell of slow growth post-crisis, the global economy’s recovery was mainly supported by the improvement of emerging markets and developing economies growth. However, this recovery is subject to wide-ranging uncertainties and is now in some danger. According to the IMF, the global economic growth is expected to fall to 3 % in 2019, the lowest level since 2008. Th ...

Lors du colloque autour du thème « Croissance économique au Maroc : théories, évidences et leçons des expériences récentes », organisé conjointement par le Haut-Commissariat au Plan (HCP) et le Policy Center for the New South et accueilli par le HCP en mai 2017 dans ses locaux à Rabat, des experts et praticiens de près de 30 institutions académiques et non académiques ont échangé et débattu de la croissance économique au Maroc dans un framework transverse alliant le théorique au pra ...

L’Inde est confrontée, aujourd’hui, à plusieurs défis énergétiques : - Assurer la sécurité énergétique du pays, en généralisant l’accès pour tous à l’électricité. Ce qui n’est pas le cas en 2019. - Le faire en réduisant sa dépendance aux énergies fossiles, afin de mieux répondre aux orientations des Conférences des parties, COP 21 et COP 22. Pour cela, les autorités gouvernementales vont mener, dès 1981, une réflexion sur les énergies renouvelables, les conduisant à privilégier l ...

Following the global financial crisis of 2007-08, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) went through a period of self-examination. The old joke that its acronym stood for “It’s Mostly Fiscal” bothered some of its leaders, who believed the organization needed to focus less on austerity and more thoroughly consider issues such as inequality, poverty reduction and gender equality when making loans and other key decisions. There was talk of a “new IMF” that had learned from its old mist ...

Le rêve d’un monde en développement qui voit ses inégalités se réduire, la condition de vie de ses populations s’améliorer significativement, tout en profitant du bonheur procuré par une population jeune, reste à portée de main. Les macro-économistes ne diront certainement pas le contraire quand on soutient que la plus grande invention de Robert Mundell a sans doute été l’idée du triangle d’incompatibilité. Le concept de Mundell consiste en l’impossibilité de voir coexister de faço ...

La décennie 2009-2019 a vu se développer les crypto-monnaies. Ce que certains appellent des unités de compte cryptées. Cette étude est consacrée à deux d’entre elles : le Bitcoin, créé en 2009, et la Libra, dont les premières devraient apparaître en 2020. Deux crypto-monnaies qui peuvent s’opposer ou se compléter. Unité de compte reconnue, le Bitcoin va vite apparaître aussi spéculatif, l’éloignant du caractère monétaire que certains veulent lui attribuer. A l’inverse, la Libra, mon ...

Global GDP has slowed sharply, from near 4% in late 2017 to half that rate on an annualized basis in recent quarters. The downturn in fortunes over the last two years has come as a big surprise. The rapid expansion of 2016/2017 was broad based but died young. Prior to it we had suffered seven long years of slow growth in the wake of the global financial crisis Why did such a sharp and steady slowdown occur against a background of loose monetary policy, supportive fiscal policy, low ...

Africa is an economic region which holds great potential despite the risks associated with its development. Indeed, many experts agree that Africa is emerging as the new frontier for global growth. Boosted by its abundant natural resources, a young and vibrant population, strong urbanization, more stable macroeconomic conditions, more stringent economic policies, a constantly improving business climate and improving governance, Africa is on track for a structural transformation that ...

En pleine transition ordonnée de son régime de change, sous l'autorité bienveillante du Fonds monétaire international (FMI), le Royaume du Maroc est un exemple très concret des avantages et des inconvénients des deux régimes de change dominants ces dernières décennies/change fixe et change flottant /. L’objet de cette note est de rappeler, tout d'abord, les fondamentaux économiques des deux systèmes et leur environnement historique (I). Ensuite, à la lumière de ces fondamentaux, pré ...

Since the Fed’s July meeting, when the Fed Funds Rate had a 0.25% cut, fears about the impact of the US-China trade war on the global economy have escalated. The US yield curve inversion received much attention as a harbinger of a slowdown in the global and US economic outlooks. We approach here whether lights on next monetary policy events can be obtained from reading the minutes of the Fed’s meeting – and of the July meeting of the ECB governing council – released this week. The ...

La création d’instruments financiers à la Conférence de Bretton Woods, à la fin de la Seconde  Guerre mondiale, était une nouveauté pour l’époque et avait sonné la fin du chacun pour soi « monétaire », en jetant les bases d’un système de changes fixes mais ajustables reconnaissant, cependant, et dès le départ, la primauté du dollar de la nouvelle grande puissance. Le Fonds monétaire international (FMI) devant se charger de venir en aide aux pays à la balance des paiements déficitai ...

This note approaches the relationship between natural wealth and economic growth, using the case of Sub-Sahara African economies as an illustration. Delving into recent World Bank reports, it highlights how a sustained positive correlation between natural capital and GDP growth happens through the transformation of the former into other forms of assets: produced capital, human capital and other intangible assets. Governance features and the quality of macroeconomic policies are of t ...

Argentina’s peso tumbled and stocks plunged after last Sunday’s primary elections. The perception of a likely victory of President Macri’s opponents – Alberto Fernandez, and running mate, Christina Fernandez de Kirchner - has sparked a new shift in investor preferences away from peso assets, pressures on the exchange rate, and hikes on sovereign spreads. Unless fears of a return to policies prevailing before Macri are assuaged, the market rout tends to deepen as a negative feedback ...

Brazil's economic recovery after the deep 2015-16 recession has been the slowest on record, with GDP per capita last year remaining more than 9% below its pre-crisis peak (Chart 1, right side). The IMF's annual report on the country's economy, released two weeks ago, estimated current GDP to be nearly 4% below its potential level, which suggests insufficiency of aggregate demand (Chart 1, left side). On the other hand, as the slow recovery reflects structural factors, it is necessar ...

Les recherches sur les sources de croissance de long terme des économies montrent qu’elle dépend plus de la croissance de la productivité que de la croissance des volumes des inputs accumulés. Au Maroc, les résultats disponibles fournissent des évidences sur le rythme très lent de la croissance de la productivité mesurée par la PTF ou le rapport production-travail. Des simulations montrent que seule une augmentation de la PTF permettra d’atteindre une croissance suffisamment élevée. ...

Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) have two financing windows, with different terms, dedicated to low- and middle-income countries. Countries are presumed to cross those windows as their income per capita rises, with middle-income countries (MICs) eventually “graduating” to a non-client status once they reach some criteria. However, due to what may be called “middle-income traps”, such progression toward graduation has been limited to a small number of countries. ...

Despite considerable effort from the South African government to drive innovation, the investments to date have not reaped the fruits expected by both government and the private sector. I believe that if we are to realise ‘the new dawn’ in economic growth and transformation the state needs to reorganise itself to be an ‘entrepreneurial state’. This paper will proceed firstly by outlining current government action to support innovation, followed by a summary of the overarching recomm ...

L’analyse des mutations qu’a connues l’économie marocaine après la crise économique et financière de 2008, offre l’opportunité d‘évaluer l’orientation des politiques macroéconomiques gérées dans un contexte relativement difficile, mettant à l’épreuve les décideurs publics en matière de politique économique et leur engagement à préserver la stabilité du cadre macroéconomique. Un diagnostic approfondi revient à apprécier la pertinence des choix de politiques macroéconomiques par rappo ...

This paper empirically examines the impact of exchange rate arrangements on current account imbalances within the African context. Following Friedman’s hypothesis (Friedman, 1953), we test the propositions stating that flexible exchange rate regimes limit the magnitude of real external shocks and permit smoother adjustments of external imbalances. Using a new de facto exchange rate regime classification, we employ two empirical methodologies to test this hypothesis: we first apply a ...

The world economy has gone through several systems to determine a value between country’s currencies. After the Second World War and the so-called gold standards, major world economies engaged into a system of fixed exchange rate of currencies against the dollar and, the whole system was backed by the value of USD against gold. After the end of that mechanism known as the Bretton Wood system in the 1970s, major world economies decided to liberalize the system of international exchan ...

Les cours des matières premières ont, une fois encore, été marqués par une importante volatilité en 2017 et 2018. Si de nombreux facteurs économiques permettent de l’expliquer, la raison politique fut également bien présente. Les Annual Report tensions commerciales entre la Chine et les États-Unis on Commodity et, plus globalement, la montée des incertitudes ont pesé Analytics and sur les perspectives macroéconomiques mondiales et sur Dynamics « le dynamisme des marchés ». Comptant ...

Next week, the 2019 Spring Meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank will take place in Washington, in this 75th year since the birth of the two institutions. Christine Lagarde, the IMF's managing director, speaking on Tuesday at the US Chamber of Commerce, offered an appetizer about the macroeconomic projections to be released. Last January, the IMF reduced its forecast of global economic growth to 3.5 percent in 2019 and 2020, lower rates as compared to ...

The author of this blog, Ahmed Rachid El Khattabi, is an alumnus of the 2018 Atlantic Dialogues Emerging Leaders program Rapid urbanization and climate change are two of the biggest challenges for cities. As much of the world is urbanizing, cities are growing thirstier, constantly seeking out new water supplies to keep up with demand. These challenges are especially significant for many growing cities that, due to historical reasons, are not located near water resources. Climate ch ...

China’s economic growth has been in a downslide trend since 2011, while its economic structure has gradually rebalanced toward lower dependence on investments and current-account surpluses. Steadiness in that trajectory has been accompanied by rising levels of domestic private debt, as well as slow progress in rebalancing private and public sector roles. As the ongoing trade war with the US continues to unfold, it remains unclear at which growth pace China’s rebalancing will tend to ...

Rarement, autant qu’en 2018, les marchés mondiaux de matières premières et de commodités auront été lle jouet non pas des tendances des « fondamentaux » (offre/demande et leur évolution), mais bien des convulsions d’une situation géopolitique mondiale qui, sous la houlette quelque peu déréglée des États-Unis de Donald Trump, a été particulièrement imprévisible. En effet, si 2018 restera dans les annales des marchés, c’est bien parce que les matières premières se sont retrouvées au p ...

Ce papier évalue les effets asymétriques des cycles économiques sur le chômage et la pauvreté au Maroc, à travers un modèle VAR estimé sur des données trimestrielles allant de 2003 à 2012. Ce modèle inclut les composantes cycliques de quatre variables à savoir : l’output-gap, le salaire minimum réel, le taux de chômage et le taux de pauvreté. Afin de tester la robustesse des résultats, deux versions du modèle VAR ont été estimées, en utilisant les composantes cycliques calculées se ...

This study was carried out within the framework of the Global Economic Governance Africa (GEGAfrica) funded by the UK Department for International Development. The GEGAfrica programme is a policy research and stakeholder engagement aimed at strengthening the influence of African coalitions at global economic governance forums and increase, inter alia, the visibility and the outreach of African views at the regional and worldwide levels. Policy Center for the New South was requested ...

Without reforms, financial markets’ optimism may crumble – and bring the house down. Judging by the reaction of financial markets, the Brazilian economy started the year at high speed. The real is among the world’s best-performing currencies so far in 2019 and the main stock market index Ibovespa hit a string of record highs leading into last week, when it broke the 97,000-point mark. Future interest rates have fallen sharply.  Foreign investors are buying in as well. The premium ...

En l’espace d’une année, la Banque mondiale (BM) a enregistré deux démissions parmi son top management. Il y a douze mois (Janvier 2018), Paul Romer quittait la Banque mondiale pour retourner dans le monde académique. Au début de ce mois de janvier 2019, Jim Yong Kim annonce son départ de la présidence de la même institution pour rejoindre une autre spécialisée dans le financement des infrastructures.  Pour Paul Romer, les critiques à l’endroit du classement Doing Business, et la r ...

Last week Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank, unexpectedly announced his resignation, effective as soon as next month and three and a half years prior to the end of his second mandate. Given the current environment of challenged and weakened multilateralism, the aftermath of his succession has a relevance that transcends the limits of that institution. While an analyst has alluded to President Kim as “voting with his feet” on the World Bank's loss of significance in investme ...

Morocco has moved towards a more flexible exchange rate system, by widening its currency fluctuation bands to +/- 2.5% around a central price. This transition will, in time, equip the Moroccan economy with a macroeconomic instrument acting as a shock absorber and facilitating rapid adjustment at lower costs. In the absence of such a mechanism, adjustment to macroeconomic shocks at times requires a contraction in demand and thereby a cyclical downturn in growth to restore external ba ...

Le Maroc a initié une première étape vers l’adoption d’un régime de change flexible, en élargissant les bandes de fluctuations à +/- 2,5% par rapport à un cours central. Cette transition permettrait à l’économie marocaine de se doter, à terme, d’un instrument macroéconomique qui joue le rôle d’amortisseur de choc et qui favorise un ajustement rapide et à moindre coût. A défaut de ce mécanisme, l’ajustement aux chocs macroéconomiques a, parfois, nécessité une contraction de la demand ...

*The recommendations put forth below have been published, both print and online, in the Financial Times.  The leaders of the G20 will meet on 30 November and 1 December in Buenos Aires for their annual summit. They need to acknowledge that the last two years have been characterized by strong headwinds for the world economy. This time, however, it is not a mixture of poor macroeconomic policies and bad business decisions – as in 2008 when they met in Washington for their first summi ...

Islamic finance is a way of doing finance while respecting the Islamic ban on interest-based transactions and ensuring risk sharing between parties in all operations. Contracts are supposed to rule out features that would make them akin to gambling or “making money from money.” Furthermore, engagements in businesses considered immoral or ethically problematic are not allowed. Islamic finance therefore means, among other features: no pure debt securities, with interest replaced by t ...

There are various definitions of Energy Security (ES) and numerous ways of understanding the concept. For this blog’s purpose, we will choose the familiar understanding of the latter as put forward by the George W. Bush Administration, i.e. it represents a situation where four characteristics are met, an energy supply that is: (1) Reliable (2) affordable (3) environmentally sound and (4) accessible.  Thus, ES represents the situation where there’s availability of energy at all time ...

If I were to synthesize the current situation of the Brazilian economy in one sentence, I would say: “it is suffering from a combination of ‘productivity anemia’1 and ‘public sector obesity2’". On the one hand, the mediocre performance of productivity in Brazil in recent decades has limited its GDP growth potential. On the other, the gluttony for expanding public spending has become increasingly incompatible with such limits in the potential expansion of GDP, particularly since the ...

The concern over global imbalances has become an effort to systematically reduce current account deficits and surpluses, feeding the protectionist narrative. However, global imbalances are driven predominantly by domestic policies and conditions, not external factors. We do not know enough about the determinants of current account balances to set out precise numerical norms. Policy-makers should pay more attention to establishing the conditions that make current account deficits and ...

The Brazilian economy pays a price in terms of productivity foregone because of its lack of trade openness. A trade opening process would bring an adjustment impact that could nonetheless be mitigated with public policies that facilitate labor mobility and job migration. Benefits from trade opening would also hinge on policy improvements in complementary areas, such as infrastructure investments, business environment and others. The Brazilian economy would benefit from opening trad ...

Depuis la fin de l’année 2017, le président Donald Trump mène plusieurs batailles commerciales, contre différents partenaires, sous prétextes de sauver des emplois industriels américains et de réduire le déficit commercial des États-Unis. S’il est difficile de se prononcer sur les effets des combats commerciaux amorcés par le président Trump, l’importance des opposants et des échanges pour l’économie mondiale en fait une source de risque pour la croissance, les emplois et les prix à ...

The IMF released last July 24 its latest assessments of the current account balances for the 30 largest economies in its External Sector Report 2018 (ESR). There was no major change in 2017 relative to previous years and the reconfiguration of surpluses and deficits that has prevailed since 2013 was essentially extended. However, there are reasons to expect more abrupt alterations ahead, as the U.S. fiscal easing under high employment conditions unfolds. Given the context of ongoing ...

The addition of a fourth US rate rise to the Federal Reserve’s 2018 dot-plot graph after the June meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee sparked a bout of portfolio outflows from emerging markets. This followed a fleeting upswing at the beginning of the month that fell short on reversing the unwinding of exposure and sell-off of assets in May (Chart 1). Country differentiation has been accentuated, with exchange rate devaluation pressures and capital outflows occurring more no ...

The spike in US bond yields since mid-April in tandem with the strengthening of the dollar sparked a retrenchment of capital flows to emerging markets (EM), accompanied by a sell-off of assets in some cases. Argentina and Turkey suffered from strong and potentially disruptive exchange rate depreciation pressures in May, with financial markets calming down only after bold domestic policy moves (interest rate hikes in both countries and, in the case of Argentina, a decision to seek a ...

In its March 2018 meeting, the Federal Reserve raised the target range for federal funds rate by a quarter point to 1.5-1.75 percent and Fed officials are now projecting a steeper path of hikes for the next two years. Recent inflation data would hint at the Fed staying firmly on track for another 25bp rate hike in June. As producer price inflation hit a seven-year high and a tightened labor market is exercising upward pressure on wage growth, there is no wonder expectations have sli ...