Responsible Consumption and Production

El año pasado durante la crisis sanitaria provocada por la pandemia de COVID-19 fuimos muchos los que buscamos refugio en la televisión. En el plano más elemental nuestro consumo de medios de comunicación no refleja sino nuestro deseo de divertirnos o de escapar del estrés el tedio o la soledad aunque sólo sea por unos breves instantes.

Los habitantes de las zonas que limitan con el Parque Nacional del Bosque Impenetrable de Bwindi y del Parque Nacional de Gorilas de Mgahinga en Uganda eran hasta hace unos 25 años los peores enemigos de los gorilas de montaña. Para ellos estos animales representaban una amenaza y daban la voz de alarma cuando salían de los bosques lluviosos tropicales donde moran y penetraban en los cultivos y huertos. Las consecuencias de estas alarmas generales eran a menudo letales para esta especie viva en peligro de extinción.

En 2015 los países que se comprometieron a alcanzar los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible (ODS) acordaron dedicar una mayor proporción de su producto interior bruto (PIB) a la investigación científica y tecnológica. Según el Informe de la UNESCO sobre la Ciencia 2021 publicado el 11 de junio el gasto mundial en investigación creció en un 192 % entre 2014 y 2018 y casi la mitad de ese aumento se debió exclusivamente a China. A pesar de este avance cuatro de cada cinco países siguen asignando menos del 1% de su PIB a la investigación.

Cotorras en los parques de Bruselas Amsterdam o Londres; plantas silvestres que crecen en el asfalto; edificios industriales invadidos por murciélagos o rapaces: estudios recientes ponen de relieve la asombrosa capacidad de determinadas especies para adaptarse al medio ambiente ruidoso y densamente poblado que conforman las ciudades.

В прошлом году телепередачи стали для многих своего рода убежищем позволив пережить изоляцию в разгар пандемии COVID-19. И это закономерно: наше медиапотребление отражает инстинктивное желание получить удовольствие и хотя бы на краткое время убежать от тревоги скуки или одиночества.

En 1997 estuve investigando en Borneo los incendios incontrolados que devoraban desde hacía meses grandes extensiones de bosques tropicales vírgenes. Un intenso episodio del fenómeno climático El Niño había provocado una espantosa sequía y una espesa niebla amarillenta cubría gran parte de Indonesia Malasia y algunas regiones vecinas.

Todas las islas tienen una edad geológica una situación geográfica y un grado de aislamiento específicos. Esas características hace que sean únicas en su género y que alberguen ecosistemas con concentraciones de fauna y de flora inexistentes en otras partes del mundo. Por eso algunas de sus especies vivas desarrollan características muy singulares como gigantismo enanismo o apterismo (incapacidad de volar).

Economic agglomeration and industrial clusters have always been part of industrialization and economic development. Since the 1960s industrial hubs have proliferated in Asia driven by policies to foster economic catch-up and structural transformation. Industrial hubs are relatively new to Africa but continue to attract attention from policymakers and researchers. However empirical studies on African industrial hubs have been inadequate and to date have had only a limited influence on policymaking. Contrary to accepted wisdom underperforming African industrial hubs offer an opportunity for policy learning from successes and failures. This paper aims to fill the existing knowledge gap from a policymaking perspective. It has three objectives: first to demonstrate the diversity the uneven and mixed outcomes and the evolving nature of African industrial hubs; second to provide insights and policymaking lessons through a comparative analysis of four diverse cases namely those of Mauritius the China-Africa economic and trade cooperation development zones the Tanger Med Complex in Morocco and the recent experiment with industrial hubs in Ethiopia; third to show that developing synergies to advance industrialization requires a strategic approach integrating the state’s productive role and executive excellence within the broader industrial policy framework.

This paper investigates the role of global economic uncertainty in Dunning’s investment development path (IDP) framework. By applying the dynamic panel threshold model to data from 76 developed and developing countries we find that countries’ net outward investment (NOI) follows a non-linear pattern even after incorporating global economic uncertainty into the analysis. At the same time global economic uncertainty has non-linear effects on NOI subject to the level of economic development. More importantly our results show that NOI is path dependent with correlation coefficients changing across the different stages of IDP which implies that uncertainty affects countries’ progression to the next stage of IDP differently. From a policy perspective our findings call for special attention to policymakers in less developed nations. Even though global economic uncertainty may not always have a negative effect or may even improve a country’s NOI for a while it may deter the international expansion of local firms. In the presence of high global economic uncertainty local firms are less likely to become outward foreign direct investors which implies stagnation in internationalization.

UNCTAD first published a list of the top 100 digital multinationals in the World Investment Report 2017. This research note builds on the analysis and conceptual framework on digitalization and foreign direct investment set out in that report. It provides an updated list allowing for an analysis of trends over the five-year period including the COVID-19 pandemic and adds new features to the data set that will be exploited in forthcoming UNCTAD work. The note describes the methodology to create the new and extended data set and points at possible avenues for further work. The purpose of the research note is to provide academic scholars with the basic elements needed to pursue further research in this field.

This paper analyses the major features of the 2020 Ethiopian investment law and their policy implications. The law has liberalized many areas of the Ethiopian economy to pave the way for increasing the private sector’s share and diminishing the Government’s role. It adopted the negative list approach to liberalization to simplify the process of determining investment fields that are open for foreign investors. It laid out procedures for handling investors’ grievances and for resolving investor–State disputes principally through domestic institutions. It also obliges investors to discharge their corporate social responsibilities. The paper argues that these features of the law demand transparent efficient and competent government institutions to properly regulate and protect investments and to attain sustainable development as the ultimate goal of the law. For this purpose it also argues that two factors are essential: ensuring effective institutional coordination and supplementing the mandatory corporate social responsibility requirements with voluntary engagement. In addition it contends that the Government needs to strengthen linkages between foreign and domestic investment promote decent jobs and sustainability enhance human resources and infrastructure and build a stable political system to reap the significant development benefits of investment as envisaged in the investment law. The paper also suggests that other countries in Africa and beyond can benefit from applying these lessons in designing or reforming their investment policies to maximize the sustainable development gains from foreign investment.

This paper analyses the potential impact of the minimum tax envisaged under the OECD Pillar Two on several common corporate tax incentives. It reaches the conclusion that while the impact is expected to be low to moderate for some common incentives such as participation exemption regimes and accelerated depreciations it might be significant for direct cuts from the tax bill which include tax holidays intellectual property (IP) box regimes and special economic zones (SEZs). Hence the response by policymakers must be informed by the specific interaction between the corporate tax incentives under their respective systems and the upcoming international standards on the minimum level of taxation.

The OECD agreement in principle on a global minimum corporate income tax – Pillar Two of the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting project – is a major step in international tax regulation and coordination. Yet its consequences for foreign direct investment (FDI) have received limited attention thus far. In the present paper the authors detail the analytical framework developed to underpin the findings of the World Investment Report 2022: International Tax Reforms and Sustainable Investment. The paper introduces the notion of FDI-level effective tax rate (ETR). Unlike standard ETRs FDI-level ETRs embed the profit shifting schemes of multinational enterprises (MNEs). They capture not only the taxes paid on income reported in the host country of the foreign investment but also those levied on income shifted to offshore financial centres (OFCs). The effect of Pillar Two on these two components of the tax base determines the increase in the overall tax rate faced by MNEs which ultimately affects the investment decisions of MNEs. After empirically calibrating ETRs profit shifting and FDI-level ETRs of more than 200 countries the authors quantify the effect of Pillar Two on FDI-level ETRs. The results show that after the reform FDI-level ETRs are likely to increase by 2 to 3 percentage points in non-OFCs which corresponds to an increase in the corporate income tax liability for MNEs between 14 and 20 per cent.

This paper investigates the role of human capital and institutional quality in the nexus of foreign direct investment (FDI) and economic growth in 46 African countries between 2002 and 2018. Based on panel data modelling the empirical findings suggest that FDI in itself does not promote economic growth in Africa; however we observe that human capital and institutional quality play a supportive role in enhancing the positive spillover effect of FDI on economic growth in uppermiddle- income countries in the region. The findings for low-income and lowermiddle- income countries are mostly not significant. Given the initial conditions and absorptive capacity constraints in these countries the positive spillover effects of FDI might be limited. From a policy perspective the findings call for special attention by policymakers to improving the quality of their human capital and strengthening their institutions to maximize the benefits of FDI.

The present paper investigates the effect of linguistic distance on location decisions of Moroccan outward foreign direct investment (FDI) using panel data on 54 host countries from 2007 to 2021 and the robust weighted least squares estimation method. The results show that the higher the share of French- and Arabic-speaking populations the more the host country attracts FDI from Morocco. Also the results show that the higher the share of the English-speaking population the less the host country attracts FDI because English-speaking countries tend to adopt institutional structures (the Anglo-Saxon way of governance) that differ from the French model inherited by Morocco during its colonization. For Spanish there is no effect on the location decisions of Moroccan multinational enterprises because of the language’s marginalization at the formal level. The study highlights important policy considerations for home and host countries in terms of investment policy and investment promotion language-in-education policies and the role of international cultural and linguistic institutes in home and host countries.

Do comprehensive trade agreements increase the participation of States in global value chains (GVCs) and contribute to their development? Although there is extensive evidence in the trade literature that deep preferential trade agreements (PTAs) can increase States’ bilateral export of final goods and by implication contribute to local development much less is known about the characteristics of this effect on GVC relations. This paper answers the question in the framework of a gravity model and uses a comprehensive dyadic data set on trade in GVCs PTAs export and other characteristics for 188 countries and economies between 1990 and 2018. Results provide robust evidence that deep PTAs increase members’ bilateral trade in GVCs over the long term especially when these agreements involve at least one developing country or economy and include provisions that support investment. These results underscore that GVC-facilitating deep PTAs are a powerful policy tool that can mobilize the potential of production and trade in GVCs for development.

En Krudthus unos 30 kilómetros al norte de Copenhague los niños de la escuela infantil del bosque pasan la mayor parte del día al aire libre. Los pequeños se ocupan de identificar los insectos que se esconden entre las piedras y las ramas caídas siguen el ritmo de las estaciones a través de la evolución de los árboles y aprenden los ciclos de la vida observando la descomposición de las plantas y de los animales muertos. Entre dos actividades saltan y retozan antes de ir a pescar o de andar en bicicleta entre macizos de anémonas silvestres.

Elles nous sont à la fois étrangères et familières. Ce sont des photos d’avant l’ère du numérique et des selfies d’avant Instagram. De leurs couleurs vintage et du grain argentique sourd un curieux parfum d’innocence de mélancolie aussi. Les protagonistes n’ont pas de nom. On ne sait rien d’eux ni de celui – ou celle – qui a fixé un jour sur pellicule ces scènes de vie ordinaire. Tout juste connaît-on le pays d’origine et l’année (dans la série présentée ici des images prises aux États-Unis et au Royaume-Uni entre les années 1950 et 1970).