Read more about the article Natural Wealth and Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa

Natural Wealth and Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa

The conceptual framework of natural wealth that we approached in the previous video may be illustrated with cases drawn from Sub-Saharan Africa. With at least 250 million inhabitants in resource-rich African countries, natural assets are responsible for more than 80% of exports and 50% of government revenues in the region. As such, the high concentration of resource-rich countries in the area allows for direct comparisons with their resource-poor counterfactual regional neighbors. We compare rates of economic growth, poverty reduction, governance, and sources of productivity growth in resource-rich and resource-poor countries. We contrast the landscapes during the commodity boom with the current one during the pandemic crisis.

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Read more about the article Por que não temer a birra dos mercados dessa vez

Por que não temer a birra dos mercados dessa vez

A hipótese de superaquecimento da economia dos Estados Unidos este ano, reforçada pelos sinais de inflação mais alta, criou a percepção de que o Fed poderá se ver obrigado a reorientar sua política, antecipando seu taper e, eventualmente, subindo juros. Haveria alguma possibilidade de um taper tantrum 2.0, caso o Fed se veja obrigado a acelerar o curso por enquanto projetado para ocorrer, gradualmente, a partir dos próximos dois anos? Os riscos maiores para a economia brasileira estão alhures: todos gerados de dentro, não como os de um taper tantrum 2.0.

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Read more about the article Natural Wealth: Blessing or Curse?

Natural Wealth: Blessing or Curse?

Natural resource-richness is basically a blessing, as stocks of natural wealth are among the factors of production which help determine the output per worker of a country. But it may become a curse, depending on the quality of governance and on the policies adopted to cope with macroeconomic challenges that accompany it. Natural wealth as a blessing supposes that the use of non-renewable resources must correspond to some extent to its transformation into the other types of assets. Such transformation passes by production diversification over time. Natural wealth must crowd-in other activities rather than crowd them out. Blessing supposes governance features that avoid rent captures for patronage purposes and misallocation of resources, as well as appropriate policies to deal with macroeconomic challenges that come with resource richness, such as Dutch disease effects of booms, temptations to over-borrow, and periodic situations of commodity price busts.

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Read more about the article Are We on the Verge of a New Commodity Super-Cycle?

Are We on the Verge of a New Commodity Super-Cycle?

Some analysts have started to speak of the possibility of a new commodity price ‘super-cycle’ after the downturn since 2011. Although it is always possible to find moments of joint fluctuation, in which commodities remain for a long time above or below their long-term trends, differences among them matter. Copper is King! It is in metals, especially copper, lithium, and rare earth ones, that a strong bullish cycle is most evident.

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Read more about the article O cobre será o novo petróleo, escreve Otaviano Canuto

O cobre será o novo petróleo, escreve Otaviano Canuto

Os preços de commodities recuperaram suas perdas do ano passado, subindo mais de 25% até aqui em 2021 e, na maioria dos casos, já estão acima dos níveis prévios à pandemia. O pacote fiscal de infraestrutura proposto pelo presidente Biden nos Estados Unidos e a transição energética global para a descarbonização trarão impactos de demanda e preços diferenciados entre commodities. As matérias-primas necessárias para baterias e motores de veículos elétricos –lítio, terras raras– já estão vivendo uma euforia de mercado. O cobre, por suas propriedades de conduzir eletricidade, tende a ser usado 4 ou 5 vezes mais em carros elétricos que em carros movidos a derivados de petróleo. O petróleo, por seu turno, não estará em sintonia com a “recuperação verde”.

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Read more about the article The Middle-Income Trap

The Middle-Income Trap

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.

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Read more about the article Projeção de PIB melhor não tem ‘milagre’, afirma Canuto

Projeção de PIB melhor não tem ‘milagre’, afirma Canuto

Corrida contra a covid no país não tem sido vitoriosa e dita o ritmo de retomada, diz ex-diretor do FMI. "Tenho usado uma analogia médica desde 2012, 2013, não é que estou entrando na moda. Mas digo que o Brasil tem um problema estrutural, que é a combinação entre a anemia da produtividade e a obesidade do setor público. E as duas se alimentam. Temos que gastar menos em emendas, em remuneração do setor público e reduzir benefícios fiscais. A agenda de reconfiguração do gasto público tem que estar na ordem do dia. Do lado da produtividade, precisamos melhorar a qualidade do ensino e o ambiente de negócios através de reformas."

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Read more about the article Commodity Price Cycles

Commodity Price Cycles

Commodity prices go through extended periods during which prices are well above or below their long-term price trend. The upswing phase in super cycles results from a lag between unexpected, persistent, and upward trends in commodity demand, matched with a typically slow-moving supply. Eventually, as adequate supply becomes available and demand growth slows, the cycle enters a downswing phase. The latest super-cycle of commodity prices, starting in the mid-90s, reaching a peak by the time of the global financial crisis, and getting to the bottom by 2015, can be seen as associated to the developments of globalization that we have already dealt with in this series. More recently, some analysts have spoken that we might be on the verge of a new cycle, super-cycle or not.

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Read more about the article Inflación y calentamiento global: ¿Por qué los bancos centrales deben ser parte de la lucha contra el cambio climático?

Inflación y calentamiento global: ¿Por qué los bancos centrales deben ser parte de la lucha contra el cambio climático?

El director ejecutivo de la Junta Ejecutiva del Banco Mundial, Otaviano Canuto, marcó las tres premisas por las que los bancos centrales de los distintos países deberían involucrarse en la lucha contra el cambio climático. Los riesgos para la estabilidad financiera, el impacto en el crecimiento y la inflación y la “potencia de fuego” de los bancos centrales para mitigar este fenómeno son las razones por las que involucrarse en este tema.

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Read more about the article Financial Globalization

Financial Globalization

Financial integration of countries and financial globalization led to an extraordinary rise of foreign assets and liabilities as a share of GDP, followed by stability of total flows since the global financial crisis of 2008-2009. The apparent stability has been marked by an underlying metamorphosis of cross-border finance, with de-banking and rising foreign direct investment and non-banking financial flows. Blind spots and potential instability remain.

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Read more about the article What can Brazil expect from joining the OECD?

What can Brazil expect from joining the OECD?

Brazil can expect significant benefits from joining the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The organization has shown to effectively promote better policies and institutions among its members countries, with significant positive effects. Considering the evidence that institutions are behind a large share of long-term increases in welfare standards, the benefits of membership go well beyond the modest costs involved in participating in the organization. Among the studied benefits are increases in trade – which are larger than those due to other international organizations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) or the International Monetary Fund (IMF) –, increases in foreign direct investment, improvements in education, and better results in governance. Risks are small compared to potential benefits. We estimate the benefits by benchmarking against an estimate of the benefits of acceding to an institution with similar goals and policies – the European Union (EU) – and find them to be very large.

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Read more about the article A mãe de todas as recuperações nos Estados Unidos, por Otaviano Canuto

A mãe de todas as recuperações nos Estados Unidos, por Otaviano Canuto

Há quem já esteja esperando que o nível dos juros de 10 anos se mova a 2% ao ano. Isso não será suficiente para deter o entusiasmo de Biden com a verdadeira reorientação radical na política econômica e social a que já se propôs a começar em seus 100 primeiros dias.

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Read more about the article Central Banks and Climate Change

Central Banks and Climate Change

There are three major reasons for central banks to engage on climate change issues. The first is the set of – physical and transition - risks to financial stability potentially brought about by natural disasters and trends derived from climate change. Second, the potential impact of climate change shocks and trends on economic growth and inflation and, therefore, on their monetary policy decisions. Finally, the possibility of using their balance sheets and their macroprudential toolkit to favor climate mitigation.

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Read more about the article Por que seria bom o Brasil entrar na OCDE

Por que seria bom o Brasil entrar na OCDE

Frequentemente a importância da entrada na OCDE é vista como a obtenção de um “selo”, reduzindo prêmios de risco, atraindo investimentos externos e outros. Tal selo é apenas uma cereja no bolo, com os verdadeiros ganhos sendo auferidos a partir das instituições e políticas que tornam o país um membro pleno.

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Read more about the article Global current account imbalances

Global current account imbalances

After peaking in 2007 at around 6% of world GDP, global current-account imbalances declined to 3% of world GDP in the last few years. But they have never left entirely the spotlight, albeit acquiring a different configuration from that which marked the trajectory prior to the global financial crisis (GFC). This is not because they threaten global financial stability, but mainly because they reveal asymmetries in adjustment and post-GFC recovery between surplus and deficit economies, and because of the risk of sparking waves of trade protectionism. They also reveal the sub-par performance of the global economy in terms of foregone product and employment, i.e. a post-crisis global economic recovery below its potential.

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