Foundations of Private Sector Growth, Lessons for Middle Income Countries
By Caroline Freund
17:30 – 19:30, OCP Policy Center, Rabat, Morocco
New evidence highlights the importance of strong firm dynamics in generating jobs, growth, and exports. Young, rapidly-growing firms and large firms create the most jobs on net. Productivity growth is closely linked with firm ynamics, where faster growing economies experience a more rapid shift of resources to the most productive firms. Large firms enable countries to compete in the global economy, with the top one percent of exporters typically accounting for more than half of a country’s total exports. The evidence shows that creating an environment that facilitates firm growth and allows large firms to thrive is critical to income growth, job creation and global integration. The presentation will cover middle-income countries around the world, with a focus on regional economies, including Morocco, Tunisia, and Jordan.
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Caroline Freund
Caroline Freund, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics since May 2013, was chief economist, Middle East and North Africa, World Bank (2011–13). Prior to that she was lead economist (2009–11) and senior economist (2002–09) in the Research Department of the World Bank. She was also senior economist at the International Monetary Fund (2006–07) and economist at the Federal Reserve Board (1997–2003).
Freund works primarily on economic growth and international trade and also writes on economic issues in the Middle East and North Africa. She has published numerous articles in economics journals, including American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of International Economics, Journal of International Money and Finance, and Journal of Development Economics, and has contributed to many edited volumes. Her work has also been cited in leading magazines and newspapers, including Business Week, Economist, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. She is on the editorial board of World Bank Economic Review and on the scientific committees of CEPII (Institute for Research of the International Economy, Paris) and the Economic Research Forum (Cairo), and is a member of the Center for Economic Policy Research. She received a PhD in economics from Columbia University in 1997.