Events

Casablanca, Morocco.

Ouvrage collectif publié cette année sous la direction de Thierry de Montbrial et Dominique David, RAMSES est l’ouvrage prospectif de référence de l’Ifri, qui fournit à un large public les clés et repères indispensables pour décrypter les évolutions du monde. RAMSES permet au lecteur d’entrer dans l’actualité internationale en respectant, et même en accompagnant, sa liberté de jugement et de choix. 

Sous la Coordination de : Karim El Aynaoui (OCPPC), Ahmadou Aly Mbaye (UCAD) et Mihoub Mezouaghi (AFD)

Contexte

Les économies africaines ont connu au cours des deux dernières décennies une croissance économique soutenue. Cependant, ce regain de croissance demeure fragile, tiré principalement par un cycle haussier des prix des matières premières, et n’a pas entrainé une réelle transformation structurelle des économies africaines (Devarajan et Fengler, 2012). Cette transformation, qui est associée à une réallocation des ressources d’activités à faible productivité vers des activités à plus forte productivité (généralement de l’agriculture vers l’industrie et les services modernes), a joué un rôle crucial dans l’accélération de la croissance économique des économies émergentes. 

The cyclical behavior of Fiscal policy differs across income groups. In the past, while industrial countries have tended to pursue Fiscal policy that is countercyclical or at worst acyclical, developing countries have tended to follow procyclical behvior: they have increased spending (or cut taxes) during periods of expansion and cut spending (or raised taxes) during periods of recession. Many authors have documented that fiscal policy has tended to be more procyclical in developing countries, in comparison with industrialized countries. However, this paper argues that over the last decade several developing countries have been able to “graduate” the sense of overcoming the problem of procyclicality and becoming countercyclical. The author will also present his findings related to policy implications and quality of forecasts of real growth rates and budget balances made by some official government agencies. The author studies the possibility that forecasts of fiscal revenues are overly optimistic, those forecasting biases are amplified during periods of expansion and also the role of budget rules in addressing this issue.

In 2014, the deceleration of global growth trends revealed wide disparities between emerging countries. While the big emerging countries face a decline in their growth potential, smaller ones continue to show resilience and drive in what seems to be a difficult international grid.

The year 2014 also brought along some international tensions, leading to a discursive shift entailing a "return of geopolitics" perspective, which in other words explains a return to classical power politics. This consequently questions, both directly and indirectly, the established order, and explains the scope and context of the respective crises, though these vary by region.