Africa Institute for Research in Economics and Social Sciences organizes a seminar on Thursday, October 13th at 12:30 p.m at the Rabat Campus of Mohammed VI Polytechnic University under the theme "Panel Data Evidence on Structural Change and the Human Development National Initiative in Morocco: a Subnational Perspective''

Our guest speaker for this event is Akim Al-Mouksit, Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Governance, Economics and Social Sciences.

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to revisit the pace and patterns of structural change in Morocco with a renewed perspective focusing on subnational trends to document the macro patterns. In that perspective, we first build a within-country sectoral longitudinal dataset covering employment and value-added(VA) that expands the international databases mostly used in the literature. Based on this novel dataset, our results shed light on the different contributions of subnational units (regions) to labor productivity growth and, subsequently, structural change. The structural change is growth-enhancing in some regions like Casablanca-Settat and growth-reducing in others like Fès-Meknès. Furthermore, we find that the National Initiative for Human Development program (NIHD) plays an important role in labor productivity growth. The NIHD program positively affects structural change, and the results are driven by urban areas. Finally, we find evidence that a bottom-up approach that involves the participation of local actors such as associations or cooperatives contributes positively to the structural change, especially in Casablanca-Settat.