Otaviano Canuto on the Middle-Income Trap

May 19, 2021

Otaviano Canuto, Senior fellow, Policy Center for the New South The “middle-income trap” has become a broad designation trying to capture the many cases of developing countries that succeeded in evolving from low- to middle-levels of per capita income, but then appeared to stall, losing momentum along the route toward the higher income levels of advanced economies. We need to approach middle-income countries as being in a complex transition phase between accumulation and innovation-based economies. Individual middle-income country experiences of falling into a “trap” may be approached as cases of lack of or failing performance in footing the bill in terms of appropriate policies and institutions.

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

RELATED CONTENT

  • October 17, 2025
    Jodie Keane, Principal Research Fellow at the International Economic Development Group, discusses how green trade measures are transforming African economies, stressing the need for faire ...
  • October 15, 2025
    Depuis que l’économie a été reconnue par les Nobel, en1969, c’est à cette discipline qu’il revient de clore les cérémonies annuelles d’attribution des Prix aux lauréats. Pour cette année 2025, c’est le 13 octobre que  l’Américano-Israélien, Joel Mokyr, le Français, Philippe   Aghion, et le Canadien, Peter Howitt, ont été consacrés Prix Nobel de l’Économie. ...
  • October 10, 2025
    This episode of the Policy Center for the New South Podcast features Dr. Hung Q.Tran, Senior Fellow, discussing the tokenization of money and its impact on the global financial system. He ...
  • Authors
    Jorge Arbache
    October 9, 2025
    Conventional wisdom holds that the United States has undergone massive deindustrialization in recent decades, with the country's manufacturing sector supposedly withering as it lost ground to China. This narrative has fueled debates about industrial policy, economic nationalism, and the reshoring of manufacturing production. But what if this story is only partially true? What if, instead of disappearing, American industry simply changed its address?  ...
  • October 7, 2025
    Global economic growth has been more resilient than expected, as the artificial intelligence-led growth seems to be compensating for the negative impacts of trade conflicts. Overstretched asset values and slowing jobs growth may be signaling that the balanced crossing of those two paths...
  • Authors
    October 7, 2025
    Africa's development depends on the mobilization of catalytic levers capable of accelerating growth momentum, with wider benefits for the African people. The digital, energy and demographic transitions are all major challenges, but at the same time they present the continent with new opportunities for transformation. In this context, Atlantic Africa appears to be a strategic and promising area, thanks to the richness and diversity of its natural resources, its geographical position ...
  • Authors
    October 3, 2025
    En dépit des progrès sociaux, le Maroc reste confronté à une série de défis. Le chômage persiste à un niveau inacceptable, l’adéquation entre la formation et l’emploi est insatisfaisante, l’accès aux soins est contrarié par maintes contraintes, les disparités territoriales demeurent flagrantes. Pourtant, que de réformes, que de programmes sociaux sont financés depuis des décennies pour couvrir les déficits accumulés par le passé. Beaucoup de ces secteurs névralgiques pour le bi ...
  • October 3, 2025
    This policy paper examines digital colonialism as a defining structural challenge of the twenty-first century and argues for the urgent pursuit of digital sovereignty in the Global South. While digitalization holds immense potential to foster inclusion and bridge development gaps, current dynamics reproduce historical patterns of dependency: data is extracted from Southern populations, routed through infrastructures owned by Northern corporations, processed by algorithms trained on ...
  • Authors
    October 3, 2025
    Global economic growth has been more resilient than expected, as the artificial intelligence-led growth seems to be compensating for the negative impacts of trade conflicts. Overstretched asset values and slowing jobs growth may be signaling that the balanced crossing of those two paths will be challenged. ...