Author: Otaviano Canuto

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Otaviano Canuto

Otaviano Canuto

Otaviano Canuto, based in Washington, D.C, is a senior fellow at the Policy Center for the New South, a nonresident senior fellow at Brookings Institution, a professor affiliate at UM6P, a professorial lecturer of international affairs at the Elliott School of International Affairs – George Washington University, and principal at Center for Macroeconomics and Development. He is a former vice-president and a former executive director at the World Bank, a former executive director at the International Monetary Fund and a former vice-president at the Inter-American Development Bank. He is also a former deputy minister for international affairs at Brazil’s Ministry of Finance and a former professor of economics at University of São Paulo and University of Campinas, Brazil. Otaviano has been a regular columnist for CFI.co for the past 10 years.

Brazil’s Economic Crossroads: Which Path Will It Choose?

Latin America’s largest economy entered the pandemic before it could heal from its worst recession in decades. First appeared at Americas Quarterly By Otaviano Canuto As the pandemic unfolds, Brazil is paying a huge human cost, with the number of

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Otaviano Canuto on Central Banks and Climate Change: Turning Black Swans Into Green

There are three possible motivations for the engagement by central banks with climate change: financial risks, macro-economic impacts, and mitigation/adaptation policies. Regardless of the extent to which individual central banks incorporate the three prongs of motivations, they can no longer

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Otaviano Canuto: Shapes of the Post-Coronavirus Economic Recovery

Data recently released on the first-quarter global domestic product (GDP) performance of major economies have showed how significant the impact of COVID-19 has been on economic activity and jobs, with large contractions across the board. The ongoing global recession is

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Otaviano Canuto: Channels of Transmission of Coronavirus to Developing Economies from Abroad

In a previous article, we highlighted how developing economies have faced simultaneous shocks from their external environment, as pandemic and recession curves have unfolded abroad (Canuto, 2020a). In addition to financial shocks, there have been declines in remittances, tourism receipts, and commodity

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Otaviano Canuto: More Than One Coronavirus Curve to Manage – Infection, Recession and External Finance

Flattening Coronavirus Curves – Otaviano Canuto First appeared at the Policy Center for the New South The global reach of COVID-19 is now clear. In a short time, country after country has suffered outbreaks of the new coronavirus, with each

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Turning Promises Into Reality – The Business Case for Gender Equality in Achieving the SDGs

By Paula Tavares and Otaviano Canuto ­ As world leaders gathered this month for high-level talks at the 74th United Nations General Assembly, pressing global issues were at the forefront of discussions, including progress toward the 2030 Agenda and the

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Otaviano Canuto, Center for Macroeconomics and Development: Is There a Middle-Income Trap?

The “middle-income trap” has become a broad designation trying to capture the many cases of developing countries that succeeded in evolving from low- to middle-levels of per capita income, but then appeared to stall, losing momentum along the route toward

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Otaviano Canuto, Center for Macroeconomics and Development: China’s Rebalancing Act is Slowly Addressing Sliding Growth Figures

China’s economic growth has been sliding since 2011, while its economic structure has gradually rebalanced toward lower dependence on investments and current-account surpluses. Steadiness in that trajectory has been accompanied by rising levels of domestic private debt, as well as

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Otaviano Canuto, Center for Macroeconomics and Development: How to Heal the Brazilian Economy

If I were to encapsulate the current situation of the Brazilian economy in one sentence, I would say: “It is suffering from a combination of ‘productivity anemia’ and ‘public sector obesity’”. On the one hand, the country’s mediocre productivity performance

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Otaviano Canuto, World Bank: Making Returns on Knowledge – How Innovation Can Flow from Globalisation

The April issue of the International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook (WEO) included a chapter on how globalisation has helped technology leaders’ knowledge spread faster. Cross-border technological diffusion has not only contributed to rising domestic productivity levels in advanced and

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