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Este articulo analiza la composicion de la clase media brasilena, sus principales comportamientos y sus expectativas, combinando un analisis cuantitativo basado en la Encuesta Nacional de Hogares (PNAD) y una encuesta cualitativa realizada a hogares de clase media. En primer lugar, la clase media brasilena es heterogenea, y una parte sustancial de ella continua siendo vulnerable a la pobreza. En segundo lugar, el comportamiento de los consumidores de clase media es sostenido en gran medida por el credito. En tercer lugar, en terminos de expectativas, la clase media prioriza la salud, la educacion, la seguridad y la vivienda, y es particularmente critica con la calidad de los servicios publicos, tanto mas cuanto que soporta una elevada carga fiscal. Mientras que la clase media alta es capaz de soslayar estas deficiencias recurriendo a los servicios privados, los grupos mas vulnerables continuan siendo muy dependientes de los servicios publicos de baja calidad.

The present paper assesses the impact of the size of the municipal public sector on local economic growth and the extent to which it is conditioned by different forms of political turnover. By relying on small but original dataset on municipalities of the Brazilian state of Ceara over the period 2000–2012 and by addressing both endogeneity and spatial correlation issues, we find evidence of an adverse effect of the size of public employment on local economic growth, which is moderated by higher political stability when taking the form of dynastic control. We also find that the size of public employment crowds in public investment in our sample, with this positive pattern being amplified in municipalities controlled by political dynasties where policy’s continuity is higher. Our findings therefore reject the assumption of a crowding-out effect of redistributive politics on public investment for the municipalities of Ceara. Our medium-run framework therefore suggests that political dynasties can be advantageous for local economic growth in our limited sample of municipalities. Yet, in the longer-run, the balance between the positive stabilization effects and the possible adverse effects related to corruption should be investigated by future research.

“What explains the feeling of being disempowered? The literature on aspirations suggests subjectively deprived people may feel disempowered because they consider that any improvement to their lot is simply out of their reach. The present paper provides original and robust evidence that, alongside the well-known objective capabilities related to skills, assets and opportunities, psychological capabilities linked to aspirations also matter. Based on a Central African household survey and tackling endogeneity issues, we show that: (i) feeling subjectively more deprived decreases the probability of reporting a high level of empowerment, defined as power from within, that is the power to change one’s life; (ii) the probability of reporting empowerment decreases with the size of the aspirations gap, defined as the negative gap between one’s level of subjective wealth and the locality’s mean level; (iii) the capability framework is a relevant one to address the complex links between aspirations and empowerment.”. © 2021 Oxford Department of International Development.

L’essor des classes moyennes en Côte d’Ivoire constitue un enjeu économique et politique central. Cet article analyse la composition de cette catégorie de revenus et son inscription dans les régimes de croissance du pays. En s’appuyant sur une méthodologie combinant des données d’enquêtes quantitatives et qualitatives, nos analyses montrent que les classes moyennes ivoiriennes représentent un ensemble limité et très hétérogène de la population, regroupant à la fois des piliers historiques de la période faste des années 1960–1970 et les traces des ajustements structurels de même que celles des crises qui suivirent. Le « secteur informel » de l’économie se révèle être une voie majeure d’ascension sociale.

Persistent growth slowdown, generally called Middle-Income Trap (MIT), is a growing concern for middle income countries' governments and for regional and international development banks. This paper (i) uses a mixed approach to identify episodes of MIT in a five-year period panel of 132 countries covering the 1950–2010 period and (ii) tests empirically various explaining factors linked to productive change that have been put forward by the recent literature. Our identification approach consists in comparing the impact of a variety of productive factors on medium-run GDP growth inside and outside the MIT. We find that the demographic drag, skill misallocation and the patterns of export diversification help explain why some middle income countries underwent or are still undergoing persistent growth slowdowns. Our results are robust to various specification and sampling changes.

Remittances can transmit volatility from host to home countries for some common patterns of diaspora's geographical distribution. In a migration portfolio model, the overall risk of volatility of any set of diaspora location is decomposed into a contagion and a concentration risks: a diaspora located in more volatile destinations induces a higher contagion risk, while a diaspora located in few destination countries increases the concentration risk. A series of estimations on a large panel of developing countries over 1995–2015 provide evidence for these two risks. Estimation of a structural model confirms that the geography of diaspora has an indirect impact on the origin country's aggregate instability through remittances.

La densification rapide des groupes a revenu intermediaire dans les economies en developpement est certainement un evenement majeur du debut du 21eme siecle (Kharas, 2010). Ce projet de recherche a pour objectif de proposer un examen approfondi des classes moyennes, de leurs caracteristiques, comportements, aspirations et attentes, ainsi que des implications de leur essor en matiere de design des politiques publiques. L’etude porte sur quatre pays, le Bresil, la Cote d’Ivoire, la Turquie et le Vietnam, presentant des niveaux et trajectoires de developpement differents. Premierement, les resultats montrent qu’il est delicat, dans une perspective comparative, d’etablir une delimitation monetaire commune des classes moyennes de revenu. Compte tenu des differences de niveau de developpement economique entre les pays, les intervalles monetaires pertinents doivent etre adaptes a la realite de la distribution locale des revenus afin de rendre comparable les menages des classes moyennes. En depit de differences considerables de revenu, les classes moyennes s’apparentent bien a des classes de consommation, ce qui se traduit par des depenses de consommation eleves qui se deplacent et se diversifient vers l’education, le logement et la sante. La relative satisfaction des besoins immediats autorise la formulation d’aspirations a la promotion de soi et des siens, qui sont partout associees a une valorisation de l’effort individuel. Ensuite, au-dela de ces elements de proximite, l’etude comparative souligne la forte heterogeneite interne de chaque classe moyenne nationale, notamment au regard des differences significatives qui existent entre elles en termes de statut dans l’emploi, de niveau d’education ou de revenu. Chaque ensemble national se caracterise par l’existence de quatre a six groupes bien specifiques pouvant s’expliquer par l’historicite des trajectoires propres a chaque societe. Les differentes classes moyennes nationales entretiennent des rapports ambigus et complexes avec l’Etat, le pouvoir et les politiques publiques. D’un cote, la tres forte heterogeneite socio-economique des classes moyennes nationales limite leur capacite d’organisation collective et d’influence politique. D’un autre cote, l’etude constate l’absence de politique officielle et globale de promotion de la classe moyenne en tant que groupe social dont l’influence pourrait etre reconnue strategique dans la trajectoire presente et future de developpement economique.

Productive diversification has long been acknowledged as a volatility-reducing strategy. Yet, recent theoretical contributions have shown that, in strongly diversified economies, idiosyncratic shocks could translate into aggregate volatility via the network of inter-industry linkages. By exploiting exogenous cross-country-sector variations in demand shocks during the 2008 Great Recession, we provide empirical evidence that the network properties of a sector affected by an individual shock determine its propensity to transmit volatility to the rest of the economy. More precisely, shocks to sectors that are located in denser parts of a production network fade out over a large number of alternative paths of propagation due to substitution effects, whereas shocks to sectors that are more influential within the network generate aggregate fluctuations through contagion effects. We also find that the impact of sectoral shocks on aggregate volatility (1) is not conditional on sector-level differences in trade intensity, and (2) is larger for developing countries because they tend to have more isolated influential sectors and larger structural holes in their production network. Our results thus help consolidate the two opposite views in the literature on the impact of productive diversification on aggregate volatility.

Summary Social transfers impact local economic growth through local demand multiplier and local productive structures. Using original data on productive structures, growth determinants and Bolsa Familia conditional transfers (BFP) for the 184 municipalities of the Brazilian state of Ceara during 2003–10, we show that the positive impact of the transfers on local growth is in fact conditional on the direction of local economic structure transformation. Indeed, transfers did spur light manufacturing transformation activities only in the poorest and less-industrialized localities and did prompt informal activities in weakly productive services in all municipalities. Although we do not find support for the hypothesis of a redistribution trap, our estimations indicate that, on average, the growth impact of BFP transfers could have been twice as great during the period investigated in the absence of the adverse impact of social transfers on structural transformation. By promoting services and informal occupations, including in light manufacturing industries, the BFP could possibly cause a problem of job quality in the future. The medium-term impact of social transfers on poor regions’ local productive structures should therefore be more fully acknowledged by policymakers, notably by associating policies promoting the development and modernization of local productive structures with transfers.

Summary Since the 1990’s, developing countries have tried to promote export diversification and sophistication, notably by attracting vertical FDI and by supporting the emergence of new industries whose factor content is distant from the country’s endowment. We investigate whether defying comparative advantage has prompted a more sophisticated and diversified export basket in a large panel of countries over the period 1992–2012. We find that developing countries that defy their comparative advantage tend to export more manufactured items and manufacturing goods that are more sophisticated. As for export diversification, the impact is heterogeneous across development levels: although defying comparative advantage seems to help diversify the export baskets of middle-income and resource-rich countries, it tends to concentrate those of lower-income economies. Moreover, we find that the impact of the distance to comparative advantage on productive transformation is strongly conditioned by the size of FDI stocks and by the country’s specialization in the lower added-value productive tasks of global value chains (GVCs). More specifically, our results suggest that defying comparative advantage by attracting FDI may be a dangerous strategy in the long-term since it tends to bring only partial and artefact industrialization, with manufacturing exports increasing while the manufacturing value-added actually decreases.

Cet article propose un etat des lieux de la litterature portant sur la croissance rapide des classes moyennes des pays emergents d’Asie de l’Est selon trois axes. La definition et la mesure de ces classes moyennes sont d’abord questionnees. Les caracteristiques microeconomiques de ces classes en termes de consommation et d’investissement en capital humain sont ensuite examinees. Enfin, la capacite de ces groupes sociaux a croissance rapide a provoquer des changements politiques est evaluee, notamment a la lumiere des specificites des configurations sociopolitiques propres a chaque pays de cette region.

In this chapter, the two authors (Francois Combarnous and Eric Rougier) describe the empirical approach implemented throughout the different contributions of the book. The key assumption that variants of developing countries’ capitalist models can be characterized by a set of sector-related types of institutional governance is first formulated and elaborated. Then, the seven sectors to these governance sets are described and justified: labour, competition, social protection, education, and finance, standard in the comparative capitalism (CC) literature, to which agriculture and the environment have been added. Theoretical complementarities and possible trade-offs between these seven areas are then commented on, before the authors introduce the concepts of ex ante, ex post, progressive and regressive institutional complementarities in order to adapt the institutional complementarity theory to the specific context of developing countries. Ultimately, the theoretical articulation of economic and political institutions is described and the various consequences of this articulation for the analysis are drawn.

In this chapter, the author (Eric Rougier) first argues that real-life competition generally consists of complex systems of legal regulations, firms’ strategies and public policies, and cannot be expressed as simple scores on a product market liberalization scale. The author then shows that types of product market governance are differentiated along two main lines: the degree of product market regulation (red tape, business climate, taxes), and the style of state interventionism, involving either traditional directive industrial and trade policies, or policies focused on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) attraction and short-run integration into world value chains. The countries are consequently distributed into five different types: the liberalized deregulated, export-oriented, statist partially liberalized, statist protected and idiosyncratic. The chapter ends with a discussion of those models.

The two authors (François Combarnous and Eric Rougier) compare the historical trajectories of three regional pairs of developing countries (Ghana–Côte d’Ivoire, Mexico–Brazil, and Malaysia–Indonesia) and describe what drove countries with fairly similar initial conditions to adopt contrasted institutional systems. The chapter shows that, in the aftermath of political (decolonization) or economic shocks (external or domestic financial crises), different domestic conditions (in terms of dominant coalitions or of the degree of democracy), together with different economic and political relationships with the former colonial power and transnational corporations, gave rise to diverging institutional trajectories. Whereas certain countries could progressively assemble polymorphic and functional systems of sectoral institutions, others failed to do so since they could only combine types of institutional governance that would appear, ex post, to be non-complementary and, therefore, dysfunctional.

In the final chapter, the editors (Eric Rougier and Francois Combarnous) provide their answers to the main questions raised in the book’s introduction. They then proceed to highlight two key aspects of the cross-country institutional discrepancies: the type of state intervention in socioeconomic governance and the role played by experimentation in shaping this type of socioeconomic governance. The policy implications of the book’s main results are then addressed, with special focus being put on institutional reforms in poor countries. Several policy-related proposals are then discussed, especially as regards institutional change and reforms in poor and middle-income countries: Should institutional reforms be coordinated or not? Are there successful “super-reformers” to be imitated by other countries? Is there still scope for individual experimentation? Finally, new horizons for research are suggested.

This chapter provides a general introduction to the book. It consists of a non-technical presentation of the research project and of the contents of the book. The author (Eric Rougier) insists there is a new challenge placed on scholars interested in international development, as most emerging economies have become competitive production systems in the globalized economy. These major changes call for a comprehensive analysis of the capitalist systems of those countries, and of their specificities in respect to both mature capitalist economies and poorer developing countries. The introduction also situates the contents of the book in relation to the existing literature on comparative capitalism and asks a series of important questions addressed by the book.

In this chapter, the authors (Eric Rougier and Francois Combarnous) identify and specify the six models of capitalism determined by clustering the country-specific sets of the seven types of sectoral governance detailed in the preceding chapters. The Liberal Market and Coordinated Market models are highly typical of OECD economies. In what specifically concerns developing and emerging economies, four distinctive models, the Globalization-Friendly, Resource-Dependent Statist, Informal (Weak State) and Hybrid-Idiosyncratic, have been found. One key result of the chapter is that institutional experimentation shows a strong pattern of differentiation between developing countries’ capitalisms, since transitional institutional models, that is, those that are no longer informal but not yet totally formal and OECD-style, are either non experimental (Statist Resource-Dependent or Globalization-Friendly) or experimental (Hybrid-Idiosyncratic).

In this chapter, the author (Eric Rougier) first describes the dominant vision of institutions and development tending to disregard an institutional system’s complexity by reducing it to a limited set of very general one-dimensional institutions and then explains that institutions are best analysed as systems since they tend to cluster their effects on economic outcomes. The chapter proceeds by discussing how another strand of the institutional literature, dealing with the varieties of mature capitalisms, has opened the black box of institutional systems, suggesting the promising avenues for the comparative study of the developing countries’ specific forms of capitalism followed by the book. The author ultimately overviews existing typologies of developing countries’ economic systems and questions the extent to which they are effectively based on the examination of clusters of institutions.

This chapter details firstly the historical, geographical and political determinant correlates of the six different models of capitalism, and secondly, various dimensions of economic performance (income level and growth, inequality, trade specialization, and so on.). The authors (Eric Rougier and François Combarnous) examine whether those historical conditions have exerted an influence on the shape of current economic systems. Subsequently, the political economies of the six models are characterized by considering constitutional characteristics, democratic outcomes, and state capacities. Finally, each one of our models is characterized with respect to various economic and social outcomes in order to check if there is a form of institutional socioeconomic or political advantage.

Macroeconomic determinants of FDI are seldom analysed from the perspective of source countries, priority generally being given to host country characteristics. Using a gravity model, we analyse FDI flows from a sample of European and non-European countries to MENA economies. We find that European investment to our chosen MENA host countries is higher the higher the source country output volatility, thus lending support to the existence of a substitution effect for European transnational corporations. We also find that the 1995 Barcelona agreement has reinforced MENA countries’ vulnerability to European short- and medium-term macroeconomic cycles. Regional integration of MENA economies and the emergence of new sources of FDI for MENA economies is not necessarily a positive development since investment to MENA countries coming from the Mediterranean periphery of Europe is affected by a revenue effect, with FDI flows being reduced when macroeconomic volatility increases in the zone. Our results are robust with respect to various changes in estimator, sample composition and measurement of instability.

Summary Around 2011, several Middle-East and North-African (MENA) previously stable regimes have been challenged, sometimes violently, by unprecedented waves of civil protests. The so-called “Arab Springs” have generally been motivated by the growing gap between young adults’ aspirations to climb up the social ladder and the dearth of socioeconomic opportunities consecutive to the slow pace of structural change featured by the economies of the region. The present paper argues that this slow pace of structural change, measured by export sophistication and diversification, may well be the consequence of the authoritarian–redistributive social contracts that were established after the Independence and were subsequently only marginally reformed. MENA social contracts are generally described as political bargains by which socioeconomic security, based on high levels of redistribution and state control of the economy, were traded against the absence of political freedom. We show in this paper that although redistribution and political authoritarianism have an impact on structural change, by their own, their combination certainly explains the deficit of structural transformation of MENA economies. More specifically, we provide cross-sectional and dynamic-panel evidence that the positive impact of redistribution on structural change, measured by export diversification and sophistication, vanishes for the very high levels of authoritarianism characterizing the MENA region. Our results hold for different specifications of the estimated equations and of the social contract variable, as well as when endogeneity issues are addressed. The paper finally describes the political economy that sustained, over the last three decades, this combination of political authoritarianism and slow productive diversification and sophistication throughout the region, before explaining how these features could well have inhibited the political capacities and willingness of most MENA incumbent regimes to reform the social contract in a radical and timely manner.

In order to diversify their risks, firms facing uncertainty in their domestic market may choose to increase their investment abroad by transferring production to more stable host economies. By estimating a gravity model of foreign direct investment (FDI) flows from Europe and the Mediterranean region to the four main recipients of FDI in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region from 1985 to 2009, this article tests (1) the extent to which FDI inflows are affected by macroeconomic volatility in the source country and (2) whether regional trade and investment agreements could have increased this FDI sensitivity to external macroeconomic volatility. We find that the incidence of FDI between two countries increases with source GDP instability and with host GDP stability. Moreover, FDI to MENA countries tends to be countercyclical with respect to the source country's business cycle. We also find that although FDI reactivity to host country's uncertainty is not conditioned by North-South trade and investment agreements, it becomes negative for South-South regional integration. Last, we show that although the source country's instability certainly matters when explaining bilateral FDI flows in our sample, its impact may be less important when investments are driven by cost differentials, that is, for vertical investment.

Export diversification has become a priority goal for the development of the Middle East and North African (MENA) countries. In this article, we aim at measuring both the effects of exports' diversification on growth in MENA countries and the way new exports and foreign direct investment (FDI) interact with each others in the process of growth. Although the effects of FDI on growth have been scrutinized by numerous studies up to now, the effects of diversification and discoveries in export have only very recently been assessed. But no one has made explicit the way FDI and export discoveries interact in the growth process. A model is estimated by the system-generalized method of moments and we provide robust evidence that export discovery and FDI stimulate gross domestic product (GDP) growth in our sample of countries, and that FDI does not necessarily have the same effect on growth according to the level of discovery of the country. We also show that the joint positive effect of new exports and of imports...

Les facteurs structurels identifies dans la litterature comme complementaires avec les IDE (ouverture commerciale, depenses d’infrastructure, capital humain, developpement financier) sont generalement ceux qui sont mobilises dans les politiques d’attractivite. L’objectif de cet article est de verifier s’il est possible d’etablir un lien, dans le cas des Pays du Sud et de l’Est de la Mediterranee (PSEM), entre les flux d’investissements recus, les dynamiques de ces facteurs structurels et les dynamiques de croissance de 1975 a 2004. Nous montrons que si, parmi ces facteurs structurels, seul le niveau d’education a eu une influence positive sur la capacite des IDE a generer plus de croissance, l’attraction croissante des IDE contribue a amplifier les effets de certaines variables structurelles sur la croissance.

International audience

This paper quantitatively compares Middle East and North African (MENA) countries’ growth patterns with those of a sample of middle-income countries. Three complementary sets of growth determinants are tested: accumulation, institutions and structural change. After having estimated the model on a sample of middle income countries, our comparative analysis shows that MENA economies sharply contrast with other middle income emerging economies with respect to two main dimensions: (1) the sectoral structure of production and (2) the institutional environment. The assumption of complementary effect of the accumulation, institutional and structural growth determinants is also tested. We show that the MENA pattern of growth exhibits structural weaknesses, like the combination of a low pace of structural change and high corruption levels, which may have hindered the expansion of highly productive job, and possibly bred massive discontent in the region.

L’hybridation des systemes economiques emergents et les transformations profondes qui s’y operent souvent en dehors des prescriptions standards, offrent un materiau nouveau a l’analyse economique. L’articulation de la contrainte externe avec les dynamiques productive et sociale internes est une explication commune de l’existence de trajectoires d’emergence ouvertes et variees. Nous montrons ici qu’elles sont egalement conditionnees par les dynamiques sectorielles, la transformation interne des rapports sociaux et les dynamiques institutionnelles qui accompagnent les changements structurels profonds subis par les economies qui « emergent ».

Cet article prend prétexte de l’imprécision de la catégorie et de l’apparente nouveauté des traits caractérisant les pays qui émergent pour questionner la notion d’émergence, au-delà de la logique financière qui avait présidé à sa genèse. Sous un angle critique, il s’agit d’envisager l’intérêt et les conditions de possibilité d’un programme de recherche sur l’émergence à partir d’un double questionnement transversal. Le premier concerne l’effectivité de changements économiques, sociaux et/ou politiques d’un ordre différent de ceux que qui ont été observés jusqu’alors dans les nouveaux pays industrialisés ou dans les pays en transition. Le second, plus provocateur, renvoie à la capacité des approches et théories habituelles du développement à rendre compte des changements en cours. From the statements of the vacuity of the concept in the literature and of the likely novelty of a series of features concerning emerging economies, this paper draws a reflection about the usefulness of an analytical investigation of that notion of economic emergence. This point is made alongside a dual strand of questioning. Firstly, are there new facts in emergence or is it still the same old story revisited. A second and more provocative point questions the ability of the standard theories of economic development to assess the huge and rapid changes current undertaken by the so-called emerging economies. Este artículo aprovecha el pretexto de la imprecisión de la categoría y de la aparente novedad de los trazos que caracterizan los países que emergen para cuestionar la noción de emergencia, mas allá de la lógica financiera que había presidido su génesis. Desde un punto de vista crítico, se trata de considerar el interés y las condiciones que harían posible un programa de investigación sobre la emergencia a partir de un doble cuestionamiento transversal. El primero se refiere a la efectividad de los cambios económicos, sociales y/o políticos de un orden diferente de los que han sido observados hasta el presente en los nuevos países industrializados o en los países en transición. El segundo, más provocador, reenvía a la capacidad de los enfoques teóricos habituales del desarrollo para dar cuenta de los cambios que estan en curso.

Human capital measures (schooling) are poorly significant in explaining growth for developing countries. An explanation is that increases in human capital have no significant effect on growth if this human capital is misallocated and underemployed. In a simple two-sector model of a small open economy, we show that the effect of education on growth is more significant if the country has entered into the structural change that raises the demand for skilled labour. Moreover, we give a special attention to the role of entrepreneurs in the increase in the demand for skills in the modern sector and propose to measure it through the diversification of exports. We then derive an econometric specification from a simple two-sector model of growth with structural change and different levels of skills. From a sample of emerging economies, we provide econometric evidence that the reduction in the traditional share of GDP and a higher diversification of export both have a positive influence on growth rates. We also show that if the drop in traditional activities is to matter for growth, it is not through the skill reallocation from traditional to modern activities whereas export diversification is a factor of higher growth, directly but also through the enhancement of the effect of human capital on the increase of GDP. Then, the point could be that if reallocation of skills is to matter, it is more probably through shifts among the industrial sector, from the older to the newer activities than across sectors, from the traditional to the modern.

Export diversification has become a priority goal for the development strategies of the MENA countries. In this paper, we aim at measuring the effects of exports’ diversification on growth in MENA countries. But we also try to assess the way new exports and FDI interact each others in the process of growth. Within the framework of an endogenous growth model, we claim that FDI can act as a complementary factor in the discovery process. The model is estimated by the system-GMM and we provide robust evidence that FDI do not necessarily have the same effect on growth according to the diversification level. We also show that while FDI have a positive and significant effect on the MENA countries’ growth, it is most probably rather linked to the direct effect on value added and employment than to the spillover effects of technological transfer.

In this paper, we build a structural model of growth and we estimate it on panel data. We go further than the previous studies of Bende et al. (2000, 2003) or Li & Liu (2005), because we not only control for the endogenity of FDI towards growth, but we also control for the endogenity of FDI towards the other variables (trade openness, domestic investment, human development) that are likely to increase the effects of foreign investments on growth through the absorption capacities building. We show that this model brings in new and interesting results about the interactions between attraction, FDI and growth in MENA countries (Middle East and North Africa countries).

The existing literature points to a series of determinants of FDI attraction such as the size of markets, the costs of labor, infrastructure, the educational level of the labor force, or policy reforms and political stability … However, potential trade-offs or complementarities between similar countries are rarely underscored as factors explaining the performance or the under-performance in attracting FDI. In this paper we try to determine if there is an inverse (positive) relationship between FDI flows in Tunisia and in Morocco. We test this hypothesis is tested in a VAR model (Vector Autogressive Regression) and we show that FDI in Tunisia attract, in an indirect way, the FDI in Morocco, probably by improving the climate of business in the region. But, meanwhile, Morocco undergoes a significant diversion of FDI in favour of Tunisia in the long run.

In this paper, we ask if the convergence in policies leads to a convergence in growth dynamics for MENA countries. We first show that FDI promotion policies have been very similar in the South East Mediterranean countries during the last decade. Then, we try to find clubs of convergence in this area through KPSS and ADF models, and show the difficulty of observing such clubs among Mediterranean countries.

A panel data analysis is used to evaluate the effects on openness/inequalities relationship of such factors as factor endowments, associated trade diversification paths, openness of low wage Asiatic countries and technological bias in imports. The focus is on Latin America. Predictions of Heckcher-Ohlin's model are only partially confirmed since endowments and consequent specializations have deepened inequalities. Openness has only amplified some of the internal inequalities making process that existed before and had some positive impacts through technology transfers implied by imports and their effects on growth.(Full text in French)

This paper recapitulates the broad outlines of the theoretic debate on interelations between population expansion and economic growth. It identifies breakings and continuities that led to the constitution of an independant research field. That field associates population studies and economic growth and development theory. That thoeretical corpus has been built by confronting empirical observations and growth economics progress. In the same time, political and ideological settings have hugely influenced the process of that field. Economic effects of population growth are supposed to be alternatively negative, positive, or non-problematic depending on the theoretical perspective. (Full text in French)

The concern about the analytic and empirical relationship between population growth and developement process is still widely controversial. In this paper, the purpose is devoted to the identification of several statistical patterns of this relationship, varying alongside with the simultaneous processes of economic growth and of fertility transition. The lack of statistical significance that has been observed by estimating this link between endogeneous GDP growth rates and exogeneous population rate of expansion for years before 1975 might then be the result of the contradiction between opposite temporal or regional patterns of this relationship, more than the indefectible proof of the absence of any relationship at all. Two dimensions of those oppositions are then explored, dealing successively with the heterogeneity of national and regional experiences of economic growth and of fertility transition. Finally introducing varying patterns of fertility and mortality evolution in this empirical investigation leads to the generation of simultaneous specifications of the relationship potentially occuring during the process of fertility transition. (Full text in French)

L’ajustement structurel et la globalisation ont profondement modifie la conception et les approches de la politique industrielle. Dans le cas du Maghreb, nous montrons que le renouvellement de l’expertise internationale a ete un vecteur important du glissement vers la construction de strategies industrielles de globalisation. Cependant, les contextes politiques nationaux, articules autour de l’Etat et de coalitions restreintes, continuent d’orienter les politiques effectivement mises en œuvre. Au final, le « retour » de la politique industrielle sur fond d’expertise internationale reproduit des logiques opportunistes, tournees vers le marche europeen sans rupture fondamentale avec les tendances passees.

Macroeconomic determinants of FDI are seldom analyzed from the perspective of source countries, priority being generally given to host country characteristics. In a gravity set-up, we analyze FDI flows from European Union to MENA economies. We find that European investment to our MENA host countries is higher, the lower the source country output volatility, thereby supporting the existence of an income effect for European Transnational corporations. In the case of MENA economies, source country output volatility's adverse impact on FDI is counterbalanced by the positive attraction effect of domestic swings of activity. We also find that 1995's Barcelona agreement has reinforced MENA countries' vulnerability to European short- and medium-term macroeconomic cycles. The emergence of non-traditional sources of European FDI is, however, a positive evolution since Eastern and Central European investment to MENA countries is less sensitive to host and source country macroeconomic volatility that traditional Western and southern European sources tend to be. Our results are robust to various changes in estimator, sample composition or measurement of instability.