Welcome to the Spring 2019 edition of the World Bank's Madagascar Economic Update, which presents recent economic developments and our medium-term outlook.
... See More + The economy has continued to perform well, with growth in 2018 estimated at 5.2 percent, above regional and global averages. External demand for Malagasy goods and services remains strong, with exports such as cash crops, metals and business process outsourcing performing well. A small but dynamic private sector is responding to this increased economic activity with banking, logistics and services to support companies all under expansion. This edition of economic update focuses on managing fuel pricing.
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Welcome to the Spring 2019 edition of the World Bank's Madagascar Economic Update, which presents recent economic developments and our medium-term outlook.
... See More + The economy has continued to perform well, with growth in 2018 estimated at 5.2 percent, above regional and global averages. External demand for Malagasy goods and services remains strong, with exports such as cash crops, metals and business process outsourcing performing well. A small but dynamic private sector is responding to this increased economic activity with banking, logistics and services to support companies all under expansion. This edition of economic update focuses on managing fuel pricing.
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Petroleum discovery in a country presents its policy makers with a challenging and complex task: formulating and agreeing on policies that will shape the country’s petroleum sector and guide the translation of the newly discovered resources into equitable and sustainable economic and social growth for the nation over the long term.
... See More + Balancing Petroleum Policy provides policy makers and other stakeholders with the basic sector-related knowledge they need to embark on this task. It introduces a number of topics: the petroleum value chain and pivotal factors affecting value creation, a consultative process for developing a nation’s common vision on key petroleum development objectives, design of a legislative and contractual framework, petroleum fiscal regimes and their administration, prudent fiscal management, transparency and governance, environmental and social safeguards, and economic diversification through industrial linkages. Although much of the material is relevant to designing policies for the development of the petroleum sector in general, the book gives special focus to developing countries, countries in a federal or devolved setting, and countries that have experienced or are still experiencing civil conflict. With this focus in mind, the book examines three questions—ownership, management, and revenue sharing of petroleum resources—that are central to petroleum policy in any federal or devolved state. It also offers important perspectives on how to prevent violent conflicts related to such resources. Petroleum policies tend to vary significantly from country to country, as do the objectives that such policies aim to achieve in the specific context of each particular country. Although there is no one-size-fits-all policy and there are no clear-cut answers to the many potential policy dilemmas associated with the discovery of petroleum resources, this publication may help policy makers find the right balance among the chosen objectives—and the right policy choices to achieve these objectives.
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Middle income countries face an elusive quest for productivity growth as they struggle to catch-up with the income level of developed economies.
... See More + Although the economic literature has identified product market competition as one of the main determinants of productivity growth, most studies have focused on cross-country analyses and have defined market concentration at the national and industry level. This paper takes advantage of an uncommon database for developing country standards containing twenty-years of establishment census data in Mexico to estimate the effects of local industry concentration in the manufacturing sector on productivity. To correct for potential endogeneity between concentration and productivity we implement a credible instrumental variable approach to isolate the effect of the exogenous component of market concentration trends on local productivity. Our main results show negative and statistically significant relationship between local industry concentration and firm-level productivity. A decline in one standard deviation in local industry concentration implies an economically meaningful increase of 0.014 standard deviations in TFPR. Local industry concentration also has heterogeneous effects on productivity for different types of industries, while its impact varies by different levels of exposure to international markets. Interestingly, our results show that the effect of being more exposed to the international markets compensates, and in most cases, reverses the negative effects concentration has on productivity. These results are robust to specifications using panel data, controlling for a proxy of markups and employing alternative measures of local industry concentration. Based on these results, it is important that government policies aimed at fostering productivity target those industries and regions more affected by the lack of local competition and less exposure to international markets.
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The Timor-Leste Economic Report provides an up-to-date assessment of key economic developments, presents the World Bank's forecasts and outlook for Timor-Leste and provides an in-depth examination of selected policy issues relevant to Timor-Leste.
... See More + The TLER is intended for a wide audience, including policymakers, business leaders, and the community of analysts and professionals engaged in Timor-Leste’s evolving economy.
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