Economy

This paper aims to quantify the economic loss from the earthquake that hit Morocco on September 8, 2023, and to evaluate the impact of the five-year reconstruction plan, that will account for roughly 8.5% of GDP. Given the geographically concentrated location of the earthquake, which hit some provinces in the central part of Morocco, the methodology used relies on an inter- province inter-industry Input-Output (IIO) table for Morocco. Assuming that the resources to be spent on infra ...

L’Agence française de développement (AFD) et le Policy Center for the New South (PCNS) ont réuni le  17 avril dans les locaux du PCNS, au campus de l’Université Mohammed VI Polytechnique (UM6P) de Rabat, les acteurs du partenariat public-privé dans le secteur de la formation professionnelle. Cet évènement a permis de mettre en lumière le modèle marocain de partenariat public-privé en la matière, notamment les Instituts de formation à gestion déléguée (IGD). Cet évènement s’est ten ...

The Policy Center for the New South and the Atlantic Council Africa Center have jointly released a report on “The Reform of the Global Financial Architecture: Toward a System that Delivers for the South,” by Otaviano Canuto, Hafez Ghanem, Youssef El Jai, and Stéphane Le Bouder. This report issues specific and urgent calls for reform, including more representative global governance, increasing the World Bank’s operational and financial capacity, prioritizing programs that would inte ...

L'émergence fulgurante de l'intelligence artificielle (IA) représente un phénomène mondial, marqué par une croissance exponentielle des publications et des investissements massifs atteignant 189,6 milliards USD en 2021, contre environ 14,7 milliards en 2013. Cette accélération suscite une prise de conscience accrue de la nécessité pressante de mettre en place une gouvernance efficace de l'IA, comme en témoigne l'augmentation significative du nombre de projets de loi dédiés, passant ...

The writing of this Report started in november 2023 and benefited during six months from the quality of discussions in the Policy center. Paul Isbel, Professor at UM6P, was a relentless proofreader who generously brought his outstanding competence in economy and political economy. Stephen Gardner went beyond his role as linguistic proofreader and showed an admirable understanding of the substance at stake. Under the direct supervision of Professor Abdelaziz Aitali, the Economic Depa ...

The Internaional Monetary Fund World Economic Outlook, issued on April 16, projected China’s economic growth rate at 4.6% and 4.1% for, respectively, 2024 and 2025. In 2023, after China’s economic reopening with the end of the ‘zero-COVID’ policy, the rate was 5.2%, above the official target of 5% (Figure 1). For 2024, the official target has been set at 5% again. Notwithstanding the challenges we discuss here, China’s macroeconomic performance in the first quarter of 2024 has been ...

Prior to her visit to China on April 4—her second in nine months—Janet Yellen, United States Secretary of the Treasury, sent a message demanding that the country should not flood the world with cheap exports of clean energy. This would “distort global markets and harm workers abroad,” she said. According to a senior U.S. Treasury official, China’s excess industrial capacity and the government support that has fueled it were subject of discussion during her meeting with Chinese Premi ...

Un proverbe africain dit, seul on va plus vite ; ensemble on va plus loin. C’est dans cet esprit de l’action et du leadership collectifs que s’insère l’initiative de l’Afrique atlantique initiée par le Maroc et qui vise la création des conditions nécessaires pour la construction d’une région Afrique/Atlantique stable, prospère et tournée vers la mer. À cette première initiative s’est ajoutée une deuxième, celle de la facilitation de l’accès à la mer aux pays du Sahel, e ...

This paper was originally published on tandfonline.com   Unemployment hysteresis, where joblessness persists even after economic improvement, reveals the lasting impact of initial downturns. We delve into this puzzle in Morocco from 1999Q1 to 2019Q3, using four methods to examine the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU) time series for unit root causes. Across all methods, we consistently find a hysteresis effect. We also explore how inflation and NAIRU interact ...

Breaking Bonds, Forging Alliances On January 28, 2024, the military leaders of Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso declared their joint intention to exit the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), presenting three substantial criticisms against the regional organization. Their foremost claimed grievance was that ECOWAS has departed from its foundational vision, implying that foreign influences have diverted the regional organization from its essential values to the detriment ...

En utilisant des données, disponibles, provenant des recensements et enquêtes réalisés par le Haut- commissariat au plan (HCP), le ministère de la Santé, et l’Observatoire national du développent humain (ONDH), cet article se propose d’étudier les changements dans le temps connus par la fécondité au Maroc. La tendance qui se dégage de l’évolution récente de ce phénomène est qu’il enregistre, depuis 2010, une sorte de stagnation, voire une légère reprise. Une tendanc ...

Low-carbon hydrogen is a potential contributor to the goals defined in the Paris Agreement, i.e. limiting the increase in the global average temperature to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. The transformation of hydrogen production is a part of this effort, as current production methods in the hydrogen industry are carbon-intensive. To achieve net-zero scenarios, hydrogen production and consumption will need to change. Creating a pipeline of projects plays a central role in drivin ...

Based on observable facts, this policy paper explores some of the less- acknowledged yet critically important ways in which artificial intelligence (AI) may affect the public sector and its role. Our focus is on those areas where AI's influence might be understated currently, but where it has substantial implications for future government policies and actions. We identify four main areas of impact that could redefine the public sector role, require new answers from it, or both. The ...

Le 20 février 2024, le Policy Center for the New South et la Banque mondiale ont mis à profit  l’organisation d’un événement pour échanger sur les résultats d'une récente évaluation du partenariat entre le Royaume et l’institution de Bretton Woods . Cette rencontre a été l’occasion de revenir sur les accomplissements, les défis rencontrés et les opportunités à venir afin d’orienter la collaboration future entre les deux parties. Au cours des 15 dernières années, le Maroc et la Banq ...

This paper was originally published on sciencedirect.com   Our study aims to investigate the role of financial inclusion as a mediator in the relationship between contextual factors and entrepreneurial willingness in Africa. While previous research has emphasized the importance of improving institutional and contextual factors to foster entrepreneurship, our study adds a new dimension by highlighting the critical need for tailored financial services that can cater to the unique ne ...

This blog was originally published on huawei.com   What impact do you think ICT and connectivity can have in fighting global poverty? At the World Bank we had a very enthusiastic and optimistic view on the potential impact of technology and ICT. Brazil had a cash transfer program for poorer families where households received money directly from the government, regardless of whether they had bank accounts. The money was not distributed by hand but done electronically: the governme ...

This paper examines Brazil's economic growth patterns over the last three decades and identifies a missed opportunity for the country to attain high-income status by the mid-2010s. Instead, Brazil has suffered from low productivity growth, and has made little progress in transforming its production and export structures in favor of higher value-added activities. This premature de-industrialization makes it challenging for Brazil to transition from its long- standing upper-middle-inc ...

Heightened geopolitical rivalry has greatly complicated the challenges facing the Global South. Countries identifying with the Global South now have to deal with the long-standing problem of promoting changes in the current international political and economic system to better serve their development needs, while navigating the geopolitically driven fragmentation of trade and investment flows. Moreover, the strategic approaches that could be adopted to deal with those challenges are ...

When countries face external financial shocks, they must rely on financial buffers to counter such shocks. The global financial safety net is the set of institutions and arrangements that provide lines of defense for economies against such shocks. From any individual country standpoint, there are three lines of defense in their external financial safety nets: international reserves, pooled resources (swap lines and plurilateral financing arrangements), and the International Monetar ...

Greater female participation in the labor market and in international trade have been recognized as important drivers for economic growth and essential targets in the context of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, achieving both targets simultaneously will be difficult, if not impossible, in most Middle East and North African (MENA) countries without additional policies to eliminate the remarkably high levels of gender inequality in the labor market. I ...

Dans ce rapport, nous proposons d’utiliser une nouvelle approche pour analyser les structures productives au Maroc. Nous appliquons les outils de la théorie des réseaux aux tableaux des échanges inter-industriels de l'économie marocaine. Nos résultats montrent que le réseau national de production présente des caractéristiques intuitives dans le sens qu’elles sont liées aux processus de production. La structure de ce réseau peut être représentée sous la forme d'un papillon, avec les ...

Councilwoman Roxy Ndebumadu is a technology entrepreneur, and special advisor on beneficial AI, online safety and emerging technology. As a two term-elected official, she represents the City of Bowie, the fifth largest city in Maryland.   Amidst the churning tides of globalization, in which currents of tradition meet the winds of change, there is a call for a new international contract—a covenant not only between nations, but with the very essence of human flourishing at its cente ...

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 ...

This Paper was originally published on onlinelibrary.wiley.com This study aimed to unveil the evolving landscape of digital financial inclusion in African countries during the post-COVID-19 era. We examined factors influencing the access and usage of digital financial services and identified population segments facing increased exclusion due to the digital divide. First, by applying principal component analysis to data collected at the country level from 39 African countries in 201 ...

En octobre 2023, la Chine a organisé le 3ème forum de l'Initiative « Ceinture et Route ». Le choix de la date n’était pas anodin, étant donné qu’elle coïncidait avec la célébration du 10ème anniversaire de l'Initiative. Une initiative aux multiples composantes L’Initiative « Ceinture et Route », également connue sous l’acronyme BRI (Belt and Road Initiative), a été initialement conçue pour permettre à la Chine de renforcer ses liens commerciaux avec les Etats partenaires de son I ...

يتفحص هذا الموجز السياسي البحث الاقتصادي في إفريقيا بناءً على معطيات من منصة ورقات بحث في الاقتصاد. ويدرس إنتاجية الباحثين المنتسبين إلى المؤسسات الإفريقية، حيث أن بعضها غزير الإنتاج، بينما يظل المعدل الملاحظ على المستوى القاري أقل من المعايير الدولية. ونتيجة لذلك، لا تزال مساهمة إفريقيا في البحوث الاقتصادية العالمية متواضعة على الرغم من التحديات الاقتصادية الكبيرة التي تواجهها القارة. ثم تتناول الورقة مواضيع البحث الغالبة من خلال تحليل شفرات دراسات اقتصادية جديدة ومجلة الأدبيات الا ...

Morocco is positioned as a new global hub of the automotive industry in an increasingly volatile international context, with various emerging countries competing intensively to gain the best returns on openness and globalization. The Moroccan automotive industry’s recent performance shows it to be the most dynamic sector in the economy: from 2014 to 2019, value-added in the automotive sector increased by almost 70% while the overall national value-added increased by only 15%. In the ...

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the name given to the broad spectrum of technologies by which machines can perceive, interpret, learn, and act by imitating human cognitive abilities. Automation was created to better fulfill repetitive tasks, increasing productivity. AI, with its impressive rate of evolution, can produce new content: texts, images, new computational codes, possibly medical diagnoses, interpretations of data, and so on. It is no coincidence that an AI-based technolog ...

- Brazil’s latest tax reform will replace five taxes on consumption with one single VAT to promote greater efficiency and sectoral isonomy. - Forecasts produced by a detailed ICGE model point to sizeable gains in GDP exceeding 4% in the long run, even if spatially unequal. - Exceptions to the rules reduce potential benefits in efficiency terms. - Policies meant to promote regional development and close the gap deepened by the reform partially achieve their goal at the expense of ...