Events

OCP Policy Center, Rabat.

Since independence Morocco has pursued food self-sufficiency to achieve food security at the national level. What has and has not worked in its approach and why? Should Morocco continue with its food self-sufficiency approach; if not, how should it change and what food security approach should it adopt? The course addresses these fundamental questions with a focus on the key issues that Morocco and comparator countries face, the solutions sought and the major questions – institutional and otherwise - that need to be addressed; and the types of policy approaches that have either been tried or proposed.

OCP Policy Center, Rabat.

The course will examine the major trends in international security. Key themes are likely to include the following : global conflict trends; conflict and development; new security concerns, for example migration, climate change, water; globalization, economic development and global income distribution; upheaval in the Arab world; international intervention after 9/11; security implications of the rise of China; European geopolitics – NATO, the EU and Russia; the global security role of the US; the role of the UN and international law ; nuclear weapons, nuclear disarmament and international politics; new technologies of warfare; covert action and multi-dimensional conflict.

Le Haut-Commissariat au Plan (HCP) organisera en partenariat avec OCP Policy Center, le jeudi 18 mai 2017 aux locaux du HCP, un colloque autour du thème « Croissance économique au Maroc : Théories, évidences, et leçons des expériences récentes ».

OCP Policy Center, Rabat.

Fiscal policy formulation and Fiscal Management are influenced by the macroeconomic context that a country faces, but it also influences macroeconomic outcomes in a country. The course starts with topics related to macro-fiscal policy such as measuring the fiscal stance, fiscal multipliers, and fiscal projections as we well as assessing debt sustainability, then moves to expenditure and tax policy.

OCP Policy Center, Rabat

In this presentation, Mr. Christophe Gouel will discuss his paper entitled “Bayesian Estimation of the Storage Model using Information on Quantities”. This paper presents a new strategy to estimate the rational expectations storage model. It uses information on prices and quantities – consumption and production – in contrast to previous approaches which use only prices. This additional information allows to estimate a model with elastic supply, and to identify parameters such as supply and demand elasticities, which are left unidentified when using prices alone. The estimation relies on the Bayesian methods popularized in the literature on the estimation of DSGE models. It is carried out on a market representing the caloric aggregate of the four basic staples – maize, rice, soybeans, and wheat – from 1961 to 2006. The results show that to be consistent with the observed volatility of consumption, production, and price, elasticities have to be in the lower ranges of the elasticities in the literature, a result consistent, according to the authors, with recent instrumental variable estimations on the same sample.

OCP Policy Center, Rabat.

This course proposes an analysis of agricultural and food policies with an emphasis on price volatility and governments› responses to it. This course is organized as a series of lectures of 1.5 to 3 hours and alternates between lectures on the economics of public policies and on case studies of actual policies. The goal is to explain the reasons of public interventions (arising from economic motivations and political economy), and to use economic theory to explain and predict the effects of public policies.

OCP Policy Center, Rabat.

The course focuses on explaining the linkages between agriculture and the natural environment and how the two interact in various negative and positive ways, including the process of climate change. The course will also introduce learners to alternative policy options and instruments for intervention to mitigate the negative and enhance the positive impacts of agricultural production on the environment and manage the potential hazards of climate change

OCP Policy Center, Rabat.

The course will introduce some of the commonly-used tool kits in regional economics that help understanding and interpreting the complexity of the spatial structure of sub-national economies. Emphasis in the course will be given to the analysis of integrated inter-regional systems. Applications for different countries (Morocco, Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, Lebanon, and Portugal) related to topics of interest for regional policy makers will be discussed.

Centre Links, Université Hassan II - Casablanca

Le centre Links de l’université Hassan II - Casablanca, le Laboratoire d’Economie Appliquée de la faculté des sciences juridiques, économiques et sociales de Rabat-Agdal, la Commission économique pour l'Afrique des Nations Unies et OCP Policy Center organisent le 18 avril 2017, de 15h00 à 18h00 dans les locaux du centre Links de la faculté des sciences juridiques, économiques et sociales de Casablanca, un séminaire pour présenter l’ouvrage intitulé «Equilibres Externes, Compétitivité et Processus de Transformation Structurelle de l’Economie Marocaine».

An Economic Debate Focused on the World Bank’s new Middle East and North Africa Economic Monitor “Regional Prospects and the Economics of Post-Conflict Reconstruction”

By invitation, Rabat

The World Bank in partnership with the OCP Policy Center announces the launch of the latest edition of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Economic Monitor in Rabat, Morocco on April 17, 2017. The report presents the short-term, macroeconomic outlook and economic challenges facing countries in the region. The current outlook has shifted from “cautiously pessimistic” to “cautiously optimistic” as, despite ongoing conflict and instability, the report identifies positive trends such as economic reforms and the stabilization of oil prices that if sustained will lead to higher growth. The latest edition also has a special section on the economics of post-conflict reconstruction. Along with providing an assessment of the economic costs of the conflicts in Libya, Syria and Yemen, the report outlines principles for a reconstruction effort focused not only on replacing infrastructure but on strengthening inclusive institutions.