Morocco's Growth and Employment Prospects : Public Policies to Avoid the Middle-Income Trap

This paper studies Morocco's growth and employment prospects in the context of a new growth model aimed at allowing the country, in a rapidly changing international environment marked by increased competition from low-wage economies and growin...

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Main Author: Pinto Moreira, Emmanuel
Format: Working Paper
Language:English
Published: World Bank, Washington, DC 2019
Subjects:
Online Access:http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/687731552311079783/Moroccos-Growth-and-Employment-Prospects-Public-Policies-to-Avoid-the-Middle-Income-Trap
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31395
id okr-10986-31395
recordtype oai_dc
spelling okr-10986-313952022-09-20T00:14:46Z Morocco's Growth and Employment Prospects : Public Policies to Avoid the Middle-Income Trap Pinto Moreira, Emmanuel MIDDLE-INCOME TRAP GROWTH MODEL PUBLIC POLICY POLICY REFORM PRODUCTIVITY INNOVATION TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION EDUCATION QUALITY FEMALE LABOR FORCE PARTICIPATION EMPLOYMENT This paper studies Morocco's growth and employment prospects in the context of a new growth model aimed at allowing the country, in a rapidly changing international environment marked by increased competition from low-wage economies and growing automation of low-skilled jobs, to avoid falling into a middle-income trap. The first part reviews the growth model that Morocco has pursued in the past few decades and discusses its limitations going forward. The second part characterizes the proposed growth model, which involves, in particular, promoting the transition from labor-intensive imitation activities to technology-intensive innovation activities, increasing public investment in advanced infrastructure, improving the quality of education, improving productivity and increasing value added in key sectors (including agriculture, high-end tourism, and renewable energy), and implementing measures designed to promote women's participation in the labor force and reduce gender inequality. The third part attempts to quantify the medium-run effects of these policies on growth, employment, and unemployment in Morocco. The paper concludes that to achieve high-income status and reduce unemployment significantly, Morocco will need to implement far-reaching reforms, to increase growth to a range of 6-7 percent and improve employment creation to about 35,000 jobs per percentage point of growth. 2019-03-14T19:35:36Z 2019-03-14T19:35:36Z 2019-03 Working Paper http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/687731552311079783/Moroccos-Growth-and-Employment-Prospects-Public-Policies-to-Avoid-the-Middle-Income-Trap http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31395 English Policy Research Working Paper;No. 8769 CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo World Bank World Bank, Washington, DC Publications & Research Publications & Research :: Policy Research Working Paper Middle East and North Africa Morocco
repository_type Digital Repository
institution_category Foreign Institution
institution Digital Repositories
building World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection World Bank
language English
topic MIDDLE-INCOME TRAP
GROWTH MODEL
PUBLIC POLICY
POLICY REFORM
PRODUCTIVITY
INNOVATION
TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION
EDUCATION QUALITY
FEMALE LABOR FORCE PARTICIPATION
EMPLOYMENT
spellingShingle MIDDLE-INCOME TRAP
GROWTH MODEL
PUBLIC POLICY
POLICY REFORM
PRODUCTIVITY
INNOVATION
TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION
EDUCATION QUALITY
FEMALE LABOR FORCE PARTICIPATION
EMPLOYMENT
Pinto Moreira, Emmanuel
Morocco's Growth and Employment Prospects : Public Policies to Avoid the Middle-Income Trap
geographic_facet Middle East and North Africa
Morocco
relation Policy Research Working Paper;No. 8769
description This paper studies Morocco's growth and employment prospects in the context of a new growth model aimed at allowing the country, in a rapidly changing international environment marked by increased competition from low-wage economies and growing automation of low-skilled jobs, to avoid falling into a middle-income trap. The first part reviews the growth model that Morocco has pursued in the past few decades and discusses its limitations going forward. The second part characterizes the proposed growth model, which involves, in particular, promoting the transition from labor-intensive imitation activities to technology-intensive innovation activities, increasing public investment in advanced infrastructure, improving the quality of education, improving productivity and increasing value added in key sectors (including agriculture, high-end tourism, and renewable energy), and implementing measures designed to promote women's participation in the labor force and reduce gender inequality. The third part attempts to quantify the medium-run effects of these policies on growth, employment, and unemployment in Morocco. The paper concludes that to achieve high-income status and reduce unemployment significantly, Morocco will need to implement far-reaching reforms, to increase growth to a range of 6-7 percent and improve employment creation to about 35,000 jobs per percentage point of growth.
format Working Paper
author Pinto Moreira, Emmanuel
author_facet Pinto Moreira, Emmanuel
author_sort Pinto Moreira, Emmanuel
title Morocco's Growth and Employment Prospects : Public Policies to Avoid the Middle-Income Trap
title_short Morocco's Growth and Employment Prospects : Public Policies to Avoid the Middle-Income Trap
title_full Morocco's Growth and Employment Prospects : Public Policies to Avoid the Middle-Income Trap
title_fullStr Morocco's Growth and Employment Prospects : Public Policies to Avoid the Middle-Income Trap
title_full_unstemmed Morocco's Growth and Employment Prospects : Public Policies to Avoid the Middle-Income Trap
title_sort morocco's growth and employment prospects : public policies to avoid the middle-income trap
publisher World Bank, Washington, DC
publishDate 2019
url http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/687731552311079783/Moroccos-Growth-and-Employment-Prospects-Public-Policies-to-Avoid-the-Middle-Income-Trap
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31395
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