looking the world straight in the eye
insights | Objectivity | Concreteness
The expert
Otaviano Canuto draws on extensive experience working in multilateral institutions, government, and academia across a wide range of markets and countries to assist clients navigate challenges and opportunities.
Latest articles
Hormuz and the Invisible Fractures: the Price of a Distant War – Views from the New South
Driven by its mission to reflect on and analyze the major geopolitical, economic, and societal transformations shaping the contemporary world, and with a view to contributing to knowledge-sharing and disseminating the main outcomes of its research program, the Policy Center for the New South regularly publishes collective volumes addressing issues of particular importance to Morocco, Africa, and the broader Global/New South. In this spirit, the Center has recently released two volumes entitled “The 2022 EU–AU Summit: Towards a Renewed Partnership” and “The State Through the Lens of COVID-19”. Today, the Center presents a new contribution examining the impact of the conflict between the United States, Iran and Israel on different regions of the world, with a particular focus on Morocco and Africa.
Energy Transition: Is It Finally Happening?
Perhaps the question “Is it finally happening?” should be replaced by another: what economic, political, technological, and institutional conditions will be necessary for the energy transition to truly take place—and at the speed the planet demands? Because by all indications, the great energy dispute of the 21st century will no longer be merely about who produces energy. It will be about who can electrify, store, transmit, integrate, and control the energy systems of the future.
Transição energética- será que agora vai?
Em artigo à CNN Infra, Elbia Gannoum e Otaviano Canuto afirmam que a nova economia da energia se apoia em uma tríade fundamental: eletrificação de processos, armazenamento de energia e linhas de transmissão
Greening in the Wrong Places: Geography, Policy Distortions, and the Hidden Costs of Misallocated Green Investment
Decarbonization is reconfiguring global relative prices. As clean energy, natural capital, and location-specific assets become dominant industrial inputs, the relative cost of producing low-carbon goods is increasingly determined by geography. Two systematic distortions explain why the expected reallocation of investment toward renewable-rich economies remains incomplete. First, industrial policy interventions, including subsidies, trade barriers, and certification systems, disconnect effective prices from underlying structural costs. Second, institutional failures create demand uncertainty that leaves structurally competitive projects unbankable. Together, these distortions generate static misallocation, leading to slower technological learning, higher fiscal burdens, delayed emissions reductions, and suppressed industrial opportunities in developing economies. This paper is part of broader research on powershoring and green comparative advantage, which focuses on the idea that decarbonization is a spatial and price reorganization of global production, in addition to a technological transition.
The Productive Value of Care: Evidence from International Experience and Implications for Morocco
Closing Morocco’s gender employment gap could increase GDP per capita by 40-50 percent; yet female labor force participation stands at just 19 percent—among the lowest in the world and still declining. This policy paper argues that investing in the care economy is not merely a social expenditure, but a productive economic strategy with measurable returns. Drawing on international evidence from Uruguay, Mexico, Colombia, and India, the brief demonstrates that well-designed care systems—spanning childcare, eldercare, and domestic work—can substantially increase women’s labor force participation, generate employment across sectors, improve human capital outcomes, and expand the fiscal base through workforce formalization.
The paper identifies four operational pillars for reform: building a robust measurement infrastructure, including a satellite account for unpaid care work; expanding affordable, high-quality childcare, particularly for children under three; professionalizing and formalizing the care workforce; and strengthening governance through a centralized coordination body. Morocco’s ongoing reform agenda—anchored in the New Development Model and the Jobs Roadmap—offers a timely opportunity to embed these investments within national policy.
U.S., China, and Latin America: How Far Does the Donroe Doctrine Go?
The commercial and geopolitical interdependence between China and Latin America makes any U.S. claim to promote a “decoupling” between them impractical. Digital technologies and critical minerals will be in the crosshairs of the North American National Security Strategy
Get the latest articles directly into your mail box!
You can choose to receive the latest articles either in English, Portuguese or both. Please note: the confirmation email you will receive may arrive in your Spam or Promotion folder.