Moroccan Economy Research Articles

Identifying and characterising the business cycle: the case of Morocco

This paper analyses the key features of the Moroccan business cycles during the period 1980:q1–2012:q1. The chronologies in classical and growth cycles, expansion and contraction phases, and full cycles in real gross domestic product are identified. Using the modified Bry–Boschan algorithm, eight business cycles were found and the ninth is not yet achieved. Then, the main features in these cycles are analysed by applying the method of Harding and Pagan [2002. “Dissecting the Cycle: A Methodological Investigation.” Journal of Monetary Economics 49: 365–381]. This method has shown that the Moroccan economy characterised by the average cumulative gain is more important than the cumulative loss and by the domination of expansion phases.

Causality and Cointegration Between Export, Import and Economic Growth: Evidence from Morocco

This article investigates the relationship between export, import and economic growth using annual time series data for the Moroccan economy over the period 1980-2013. The cointegration technique has been employed to see the long run equilibrium relationship among variables. For this end, Granger causality test based on vector error correction model (VECM) has been adopted to see both short and long run causality among the variables. The cointegration results confirm the existence of the long-run relationship among these variables. For the short-run causality, the findings suggest (i) bidirectional causality between economic growth and import, (ii) unidirectional causality that run from export to import, and (iii) no-directional causality between economic growth and export.

Abandoned Quarries in the Akreuch Area (Western Morocco): Inventory of Flora for a Rehabilitation Strategy

Quarrying is an activity contributing to the vitality of the Moroccan economy. However, most of these quarries were abandoned at the end of extraction and became dump and later a place of uncontrolled landfills. The number of restored or rehabilitated quarries is limited and this threatens several aspects of the environment, especially, the quality of surface and ground water, landscape, forests, etc. This also gives rise to increased erosion risk. The study identifies plant species covering 10 abandoned quarries in the region of Rabat, especially the Bouregreg River and its affluent Akreuch in order to define a strategy for their restoration or rehabilitation. Field surveys were led to locate and map 10 abandoned quarries and to sample plant species. Herbaria were established and species were identified and classified. The results of the study distinguished 46 different plant species spread over 45 genera and 27 botanical families. The most dominant family in the quarries visited is Asteraceae. These results will allow us to study the vegetation dynamics in these abandoned lands and serve as a basis, in the selection of appropriate species in eventual restoration or rehabilitation projects.

Africa’s Last Colony

Africa’s Last Colony

Qualité de formation

La mondialisation et l'ouverture progressive de l'économie marocaine l'expose à une concurrence étrangêre de plus en plus forte. La compétitivité devient une préoccupation essentielle aussi bien des entreprises que des gouvernements. Dans ce contexte, la recherche d'un avantage concurrentiel durable repose, de plus en plus, sur les ressources internes de l'entreprise. Cette perspective interne, connue sous le nom d'Approche des Ressources et Compétences, permet de montrer comment les ressources et compétences détenue par l'entreprise permettent de fonder sa compétitivité. Le paradigme relationnel, par opposition à l'approche transactionnelle du marketing, permet d'aller au-delà de la satisfaction des clients en cherchant leur fidélisation et leur attachement à l'entreprise, ses marques et ses produits. Cette fidélisation ne peut être réalisée sans l'engagement d'une catégorie du personnel de l'entreprise que sont ses équipes commerciales. Ces derniêres doivent être dotées des compétences nécessaires pour relever un tel défi. Ainsi, investir dans l'acquisition et le développement des compétences commerciales de sa force de vente s'avêre être une priorité pour toute entreprise qui cherche à être compétitive. Dans ce sens, la qualité de formation se pose avec acuité et doit pousser l'entreprise à mettre en place des processus de formation performants. La formation doit sortir d'un cadre purement administratif et budgétaire pour être considérée comme une problématique de gestion en rapport direct avec la performance globale de l'entreprise. Le présent papier se propose, aprês une brêve présentation des choix paradigmatiques, que sont « l'approche des ressources et compétences » et le « marketing relationnel », de s'interroger sur les missions et compétences attendues des commerciaux dans le contexte actuel d'hyper-compétition. Il sera ensuite question de discuter de la qualité de formation et des processus de formation aux métiers commerciaux. Cette discussion sera enrichie par les données issues d'une enquête terrain administrée auprês de deux population différentes, les commerciaux et managers commerciaux pour le monde de l'entreprise et les formateurs en commerce pour le monde de la formation professionnelle.

The Determinants of Entrepreneurial Act in the Moroccan Textile Sector: A Logistic Regression Approach

Entrepreneurship and business creation is a key factor to enhance the vitality and development of the Moroccan economy especially when undertaken in areas of high economic impact including the textile sector.To delineate the main determinants of entrepreneurial activity factors, we mobilized the theoretical model of planned behavior (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1991), and the model of Shapero (1993) who consider the desirability of the act of undertake as a dependent variable of demographic variables and personality traits. Our results have directed us to the proposal of some actions to be taken to increase the likelihood of undertaking in this area. Each proposed action is accompanied by an approximation of the expected positive effects on endogenous variable due to a variation of a factor

Key Sectors in the Moroccan Economy: An Application of Input-Output Analysis

Abstract The exploration of the structural features and sectoral interdependences of and in an economy is fundamental for the understanding of its modes of functioning and of its transformations over time. Input-output analysis is largely used to fulfill this objective. Furthermore, information provided by the Leontief inverse matrix is useful for the identification of key sectors. This identification may guide policy makers in setting an adequate industrial strategy. In this paper, the classification of productive sectors is performed by using the Unweighted Rassmussen Approach. The ordering of sectors depends on the intensity of their links with other sectors. Two results ought to be highlighted. First, key sectors of the Moroccan economy (sectors that are classified in category II) reduced to two sectors in 2007 instead of four sectors in 1998. Second, the ordering of sectors is highly sensitive to the precision of the data and to the year in which the classification is realized.

National Innovation Systems: The Moroccan Case

Morocco has introduced in the late 90s a National Innovation System (NIS) to make innovation a driving force for economic development in a particularly competitive context. However, the anticipated dynamics of this system do not live up to expectations. In this context, this paper proposes an analysis of the architecture of the Moroccan NIS, its achievements in the field of innovation, and its limits. The overall goal of the article is to understand why technical high-performance remains of limited impact over Moroccan economy.

Improving the energy-efficient envelope design for Moroccan houses

The building sector accounts for about 36% of final energy consumption in Morocco, with 29% reserved for residential and 7% for the tertiary sector. This energy consumption is expected to increase in view of major projects initiated and planned by the government in key sectors of the Moroccan economy. Thus, this article presents a dynamic energetic study for an individual house building located in Oujda city (Morocco) by using TRNSYS software. A typical meteorological year (TMY) corresponding to Oujda city was established and used to determine the required energy for obtaining the thermal comfort in winter and summer conditions. Special attention was paid to the effect of different parameters, such as insulation and thermal mass, colour of external surfaces, window type and area and shading on the annual required energy. Results show that annual heating required energy is reduced by 8.38% and the annual cooling required energy is reduced by 70.54% by using 6 cm of EPS thermal insulation to the outside of exterior walls. The window area plays an important role in building energy consumption in the Moroccan environment. A saving of 1.91% in annual required heating energy and 6% in annual cooling required energy for the base case house can be achieved by replacing the single glazing by double glazing.

The circumstances favouring the worker accidents in the buildings and public works industry in Kenitra city and in its area (Morocco)

BackgroundThe construction sector is very active for the Moroccan economy. However working accidents are parts of this sector problems.AimsThis paper provides an analysis of circumstances that characterise the work of...

Is international migration a cure for Moroccan unemployment?

Recently, much research interest has been directed towards the impact of migration on the sending country. However, we think that this literature does not successfully analyse the effects of migration on unemployment and wage rates, especially in urban areas. It studies the effect of one kind of migration flow, mainly international migration, on the labour market in the country of origin and shows that international migration is able to reduce the unemployment rate and/or raise the wage rate. However, it is common to find sending countries simultaneously affected by inflows and outflows of workers. Using a detailed computable general equilibrium (CGE) model applied to the Moroccan economy, we show that if we simultaneously take into account Moroccan emigration to the European Union (EU), immigration from Sub-Saharan Africa into Moroccan urban areas and rural-urban migration, the impact on Moroccan urban labour market disaggregated by professional categories is ambiguous.

The Impact of Migration on the Moroccan Economy

The most obvious problem facing the Moroccan economy is the rapidly growing demand for employment. Even given the relatively positive levels of economic growth that Morocco has enjoyed recently, this demand is unlikely to be met. Financial transfers from emigrants have long been important but since the end of the 1990s they have rapidly become the source of greatest contribution of foreign exchange to the economy. Using a number of large-scale surveys which the author has been involved in recently, this paper considers the potential contribution of remittances and other financial transfers to resolving the challenges faced by the Moroccan economy. Evidence suggests that a large majority of emigrants plan continued investment projects in Morocco, principally in the service sector. Though the geographical distribution of these investments remains uneven, they will certainly contribute to creating employment in many areas in which it is needed.

When Migrant Remittances Are Not Everlasting: How Can Morocco Make Up?

This paper builds a dynamic computable general equilibrium model of the Moroccan economy that investigates the linkages that transmit the influence of remittances to households and economic sectors. The model shows that the linkage between the real estate sector and other sectors in a general equilibrium context gives interesting results. Given that the real estate sector uses intermediary inputs from other sectors, a drop of remittances will negatively affect the overall economy in contrast to the little impact such a drop will have in partial equilibrium. Hence, the channeling of investment from real estate to productive sectors is unexpectedly harmful. Positive effects arise only from an improvement in the country risk premium and from a reduction of international transfer costs.

The political economy of growth in Morocco

This paper is an attempt to explain the relatively low performance of the Moroccan economy during the last four decades using a political economy approach. In that period, the Moroccan society benefited from sophisticated institutions that facilitated policy coordination and commitment. But, the existing institutions hampered the participation of large segments of the population and political parties representing them in the policymaking process. Also, the centralization of administration hindered local initiatives. However, numerous and significant structural reforms have been undertaken in the 1980s and 1990s and in recent years a strategy has been adopted that combines continued economic liberalization, increased democratization, and efforts to reduce poverty and promote human development. These changes have started to bear fruit in the past few years.

Confidence Regions for Calibrated Parameters in Computable General Equilibrium Models

Afin d'apprecier l'incertitude sur les parametres calibres des modeles calculables d'equilibre general (MCEG), nous etudions deux methodes pour construire des regions de confiance sur ces parametres. La premiere repose sur une technique de projection a partir de regions (frequentistes ou bayesiennes) sur les parametres libres d'un MCEG deterministe. La seconde permet la presence de perturbations aleatoires dans le modele, en exploitant des techniques de simulation. Des applications a des MCEG de l'economie marocaine sont presentees.

La migración laboral Marroqui y los territorios españoles de Ceuta y Melilla

The Spanish enclaves of Ceuta y Melilla in Northern Morocco play central roles in the politics of trans-Mediterranean migration. They are crucial to the Northern Moroccan economy because of the movement of people and goods through the duty free-zones. In addition, Ceuta and Melilla are at the heart of a heated diplomatic dispute between Spain and Morocco, with Rabat challenging Spain's riht to claim the territories as sovereing territory. However, each enclave's sovereignty is reinforce, not undermined, by the labour migration system within witch they exist. As such, despite Rabat's occasional grumbling and dissatisfaction, the territories will likely remain Spanish. Morocco, for its part, will have the benefit of a useful bargaining card in negotiations with Spain and the EU.

Removal of fluoride from moroccan phosphate and synthetic fluoroapatites

Natural phosphate is of importance to the Moroccan economy because it is a raw material for the production of phosphoric acid and phosphate fertilizers. However, toxic elements such as fluorine are present in the ore and cause problems in the industrial processes. In the present work, we have studied the extraction of fluoride from various phosphates using a steam atmosphere at various temperatures. Natural phosphates and synthetic fluoroapatites have been studied. A correlation between the fluoride mobility in the structure and its extraction has been established.

Statistical Inference for Computable General Equilibrium Models, with Application to A Model of the Moroccan Economy

We study the problem of measuring the uncertainty of computable general equilibrium (CGE) (or RBC)-type model simulations associated with parameter uncertainty. We describe two approaches for building confidence sets on model endogenous variables. The first uses a standard Wald-type statistic. The second approach assumes that a confidence set (sampling or Baycsian) is available for the free parameters, from which confidence sets are derived by a projection technique. The latter has two advantages: first, confidence set validity is not affected by model nonlinearities; second, we can easily build simultaneous confidence intervals for an unlimited number of variables. We study conditions under which these confidence sets take the form of intervals and show how they can be implemented using standard methods for solving CGE models. We present an application to a CGE model of the Moroccan economy to study the effects of policy-induced increases of transfers from Moroccan expatriates.

Libre-échange, répartition du revenu et migrations au Maroc

This paper adresses the issue of trade liberalization, as an alternative to international migration, between Morocco and Europe. A dynamic computable general equilibrium model of the Moroccan economy is used to study the likely consequences of free trade upon incomes and employment, as well as their distribution among sectors and social categories. It is found that the budgetary (increase in indirect taxes) and monetary (devaluation) measures that accompany the lowering of import duties somewhat lessen the positive effects of a better factor allocation, and that in the long run free trade would only have a limited impact on national income, total employment and poverty. The hypotheses concerning the responses of exports and foreign investment are crucial for this kind of assessment, as well as the type of cge model used.

Morocco and the Western Sahara

This article offers a detailed summary of the stages of the war that has been waged since the end of Spanish colonial rule in Western Sahara. It documents the forms of struggle used by the Polisario Front in its efforts to end the enforced division of Western Sahara between Morocco and Mauretania in 1976, and, after 1979, the efforts of Morocco to incorporate the territory. It also offers a summary of the international political dimensions of the struggle — the diplomatic and military aid Morocco receives from the West, especially the USA, and the support of some OAU members and in the UN for the rights of self‐determination of the Saharan people. It concludes with an assessment of the impact of the war on Moroccan politics, society and economy.