What Would Make Morocco an Emerging Economy?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14738/abr.86.8155Keywords:
Emerging economy, economic freedom, economic development, economic sustainability, GDP, pcGDPAbstract
Morocco is steadily progressing toward development and may well join the ranks of rich countries as early as in 2022. We perform least squares regressions on a sample of 12 components of economic freedom, for a total of 375 observations over 25 years (1995-2019). We also consider Morocco’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in USD billion, Morocco’s GDP growth as a percentage of change (pcGDP)and Morocco’s per capita GDP based on purchasing power parity (PPP) in USD for the last 25 years. The empirical evidence shows that during this period, Morocco achieved an enviable level of performance by increasing its GDP by 455%, despite the strong demographic pressures exerted by 35% population growth.[1]
However, the country’s performance in relation to some components of its economic freedom was so weak that it may end up jeopardizing this economic development momentum, as expressed by the behaviour of its pcGDP and the increase of this value over time. Morocco must introduce some fundamental changes in its economic freedom policies if it wishes to continue to progress. Fortunately, the country appears to have the determination to do so.
[1]According to the IMF, Morocco’s population grew from 26.7995 million in 1995 to 36.47 million in 2019, an increase of 36%.
References
Chauffour, J-P. (2018), Le Maroc à l’horizon 2040. Banque Mondiale.
Credit Suisse (2018), Global Wealth Report. https://www.credit-suisse.com/about-us/en/reports-research/global-wealth-report.html.
Economic Freedom of the World (EFW). Originally developed by the Fraser Institute.
Fair Observer (2019), There Are Mixed Messages on the Moroccan Economy. At: https://www.fairobserver.com/region/middle_east_north_africa/morocco-maghreb-maroc-moroccan-economy-latest-world-news-796983/. Accessed March 17, 2020.
Harris J., A. Senhadji, and A. F. Tieman (2019), A Global Picture of Public Wealth. IMF blog. At: https://blogs.imf.org/2019/06/18/a-global-picture-of-public-wealth/
IMF (2019), IMF Staff Completes Second Review Mission of the Precautionary and Liquidity Line for Morocco. At: https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2019/11/11/pr19408-morocco-imf-staff-completes-2nd-review-mission-of-the-precautionary-and-liquidity-line. Accessed March 19, 2020.
Islam, R. and M. McGillivray (2019), Wealth inequality, governance and economic growth. Economic Modelling. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econmod.2019.06.017,
Inestopedia, https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/emergingmarketeconomy.asp
Koukoulas, S. (2015), Economic growth more likely when wealth distributed to poor instead of the rich. The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jun/04/better-economic-growth-when-wealth-distributed-to-poor-instead-of-rich.
Morck, D., A. Stangeland, and B. Yeung (1998), “Inherited Wealth, Corporate Control, and Economic Growth the Canadian Disease? At: https://www.nber.org/chapters/c9014.pdf.
Naciri. A. (2018). The Governance Structures of the Bretton Woods Financial Institutions - A Case of “Beggar-Thy-Neighbour.” Springer, New York (2018). At: https://www.amazon.com/dp/3319979051
Powell B. (2019), Making Poor Nations Rich: Entrepreneurship and the Process of Economic Development. Stanford University Press.
Sachs (2006), The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time, Foreign affairs (Council on Foreign Relations).
The Heritage Foundation (2019), https://www.heritage.org/index/country/morocco
The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal (2018), Index of Economic Freedom (IEF). https://www.heritage.org/index/download#
Wolla, S. (2017), Why Are Some Countries Rich and Others Poor? Page One Economics. At: https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/page1-econ/2017/09/01/why-are-some-countries-rich-and-others-poor/
https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/22553 Licence: CC BY 3.0 IGO.
World Bank (2017), World Development Report 2017. Governance and the Law. http://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/wdr2017. Accessed 10 January, 2018
World Bank (2019), https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2019/02/19/morocco-new-program-of-support-focused-on-investing-in-people-and-economic-transformation
World Bank (2019a), Morocco's Economic Update October 2019. At: https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/morocco/publication/economic-update-october-2019
World Bank (2019b), Morocco: New Program of Support 2019-2024 Focused on Investing in People and Economic Transformation. At: file:///Users/UQAM/Desktop/MAROC%20DEV/Morocco%20%20New%20Program%20of%20Support%20Focused%20on%20Investing%20in%20People%20and%20Economic%20Transformation.html. Accessed March 20, 2020.
World Bank (2020), Doing Business Report. At: https://www.google.com/search?q=World+Bank,+(2020),+Doing+Business+Report&client=firefox-b-d&sxsrf=ALeKk02azTPL0z4ExCHqhfLg1VEdpnlHjQ:1584481843784&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=hYQZ0rWHDHQkpM%253A%252CH8fqC8mrYTFcVM%252C_&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kT5cGUt9XXUdGkVQDK0aDqEK2u0Pw&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiRmc7rvqLoAhW7IDQIHRhBANMQ9QEwAHoECAUQAw#imgrc=hYQZ0rWHDHQkpM:
