Palmade, Vincent

Person:
Palmade, Vincent

Fields of Specialization

Investment climate, Competitiveness

Last updated: January 31, 2023

Biography

Vincent Palmade is a Lead Economist at the World Bank on the South Asia Region.

Full item page

Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 9 of 9

South Asia's Turn: Policies to Boost Competitiveness and Create the Next Export Powerhouse
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2016-10-06) Lopez-Acevedo, Gladys; Medvedev, Denis; Palmade, Vincent
South Asia has a huge need to create more and better jobs for a growing population – especially in the manufacturing industries where it is underperforming as compared to East Asia. The report examines three critical and relatively understudied drivers of competitiveness: Economies of agglomeration: firms and workers accrue benefits from locating close together in cities or clusters through urbanization and localization. Participation in global value chains: stronger competitive pressures weed out least productive firms while others improve by gaining access to new knowledge and better inputs. Firm capabilities: in order to operate close to what would be considered optimum efficiency levels given the prevailing factor prices and thus employ South Asia’s abundant labor. The report entails four case studies of critical industries: apparel (based on the “Stitches to Riches” World Bank report), automotive, electronics and agribusiness. The report also draws on relevant good practices from around the world. The report shows that South Asia has great untapped competitiveness potential (including in all four industries studied). Realizing this potential would require the governments in the region to pursue second generation trade policy reforms for firms to better contribute to and benefit from global value chains (e.g. facilitating imports for exporters), to facilitate the development of industrial clusters in secondary cities (cheaper and less congested than the metros) as well as to deploy policies to improve the capabilities of firms, especially SMEs.
Light Manufacturing in Africa : Targeted Policies to Enhance Private Investment and Create Jobs
(World Bank, 2012-02-21) Chandra, Vandana; Dinh, Hinh T.; Cossar, Frances; Palmade, Vincent
The World Bank's strategy for Africa's future recognizes the central importance of industrialization in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the consequent creation of productive jobs for Africans, which have long been a preoccupation of African leaders and policy makers. This book represents an attempt to address these issues. The book stresses that, while the recent turnaround in Africa's economic growth is encouraging, this growth must be accompanied by structural transformation to be sustainable and to create productive employment for its people. For many African countries, this transformation involves lifting workers from low-productivity agriculture and informal sectors into higher productivity activities. Light manufacturing can offer a viable solution for Sub-Saharan Africa, given its potential competitiveness that is based on low wage costs and abundance of natural resources that supply raw materials needed for industries. This study has five features that distinguish it from previous studies. First, the detailed studies on light manufacturing at the subsector and product levels in five countries provide in-depth cost comparisons between Asia and Africa. Second, building on a growing body of work, the report uses a wide array of quantitative and qualitative techniques, including quantitative surveys and value chain analysis, to identify key constraints to enterprises and to evaluate differences in firm performance across countries. Third, the findings that firm constraints vary by country, sector, and firm size led us to adopt a targeted approach to identifying constraints and combining market-based measures and selected government interventions to remove them. Fourth, the solution to light manufacturing problems cuts across many sectors and does not lie only in manufacturing alone. Solving the problem of manufacturing inputs requires solving specific issues in agriculture, education, and infrastructure. Fifth, the report draws on experiences and solutions from other developing countries to inform its recommendations. The report's goal is to find practical ways to increase employment and spur job creation in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Georgia Competitive Industries Preliminary Sector Diagnostic
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-06) Onugha, Ifeyinwa; Iootty, Mariana; Kilroy, Austin; Palmade, Vincent
As a small and open economy, Georgia's growth prospects are directly linked to its ability to produce and sell goods and services competitively in the global marketplace. The World Bank Georgia Competitive Industries Technical Assistance Project has been launched in February 2013 in response to the December 19, 2012 letter of the Ministry of economy and sustainable development of Georgia with the request to get the Bank's support in diagnoses of trade competitiveness and identification of a road map for reform to enhance Georgia's export growth and competitiveness. The project is envisioned as a three phase program, that comprises: February-June 2013 analytical and technical assistance support, including diagnostic of trade competitiveness and constraints to export growth, and competitive industries sector diagnostic report, supported by extensive discussions through a series of workshops, private and public sector interviews, discussions and a large 2-day seminar on February 28-March 1, 2013; July-December 2013-deep dive analysis of selected competitive industries and development of a reform road map to support Georgia's competiveness strategy; and from January 2013-reform implementation, supported by the Bank's technical assistance, policy advice and lending operations. The report is prepared on the basis of the competitive industries sector prioritisation framework. The report incorporates ideas and recommendations received during February 28-March 1, 2013 seminar and several smaller workshops and brainstorming sessions held in March-May 2013. Export led growth provides also a strong motivation to reform the domestic industries which will continue to account for the vast majority of employment. Georgia's main domestic industries include agriculture, retail/wholesale, construction, transportation, health and education. Since economic growth is accounted for by productivity improvements by workers in all industries, export-led growth can play a key role in raising these productivity levels.
Reform Teams
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-02) Criscuolo, Alberto; Palmade, Vincent
This note is about reform teams.They belong to an exclusive group of economies that grew out of poverty in less than 30 years. They also initially relied on a small, dedicated team of experts to get the job done. These teams brought to bear world-class skills along with direct access to the top level of government and a large development budget. That combination of skills, access, and resources gave them the clout to steer an ambitious reform agenda through vested interests and layers of government.
Reforming the Investment Climate : Lessons for Practitioners
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2006-08) Kikeri, Sunita; Kenyon, Thomas; Palmade, Vincent
Most people agree that a good investment climate is essential for growth and poverty reduction. Less clear is how to achieve it. Many reforms are complex, involving more than technical design and content. They are both political, facing opposition from organized and powerful groups-and institutionally demanding, cutting across different departments and levels of government. Reform thus requires paying as much attention to understanding the politics and institutional dimensions as to policy substance, which is the goal of this paper. Drawing from more than 25 case studies, it shows that there is no single recipe or "manual" for reform, given diverse contexts and serendipity in any reform effort. But three broad lessons emerge. The first is to recognize and seize opportunities for reform. Crisis and new governments are important catalysts, but so is the competition generated by trade integration and new benchmarking information. The second is to invest early in the politics of reform. Central to this process is using education and persuasion strategies to gain wider acceptance and neutralize opponents. Pilot programs can be valuable for demonstrating the benefits and feasibility of change. And the third is to pay greater attention to implementation and monitoring. This does not require full scale public management reforms. Reformers can draw on private sector change management techniques to revitalize public institutions responsible for implementation. Given the cross-cutting nature of reform, new oversight mechanisms may be needed to monitor and sustain reform. The paper concludes with an emerging checklist for reformers and identifies areas for future work.
Reforming the Investment Climate : Lessons for Practitioners
(Washington, DC: World Bank and IFC, 2006) Kikeri, Sunita; Kenyon, Thomas; Palmade, Vincent
Drawing from more than 25 case studies, this book shows that reform often requires paying as much attention to dealing with the politics and institutional dimensions as to designing policy substance. While there is no single recipe or manual for reform, the authors highlight three broad lessons. The first is to recognize and seize opportunities for reform. Crisis and new governments are important catalysts, but so is the competition generated by trade integration and new benchmarking information. The second is to invest early in the politics of reform. Public education can help gain wide acceptance for reform, while pilot programs can be valuable for demonstrating the benefits and feasibility of change. And the third is to treat implementation and monitoring as an integral part of the reform process and not merely as an afterthought. In the absence of public sector reform, reformers can draw on private sector change management techniques to revitalize institutions and put in place mechanisms to monitor and sustain reform. The book provides an emerging checklist for reformers and identifies areas for future work.
Industry Level Analysis : The Way to Identify the Binding Constraints to Economic Growth
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005-03) Palmade, Vincent
There are many economic diagnostic tools available which are trying to identify the constraints to economic growth in a given country. Unfortunately these tools tend to provide inconclusive and often conflicting answers as to what the most important constraints are. Even more worrisome, they tend to overlook the many industry-specific policy and enforcement issues which, collectively, have been found to be the most important constraints to economic growth. This is the key finding from more than 10 years of economic research by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI). The MGI Country studies have been uniquely based on the in-depth analysis of a representative sample of industries where clear causality links could be established between factors in the firms' external environment and their behavior, in particular through the analysis of competitive dynamics. They showed in detail how industry-specific policy and enforcement issues were the main constraints to private investment and fair competition-the two drivers of productivity and thus economic growth. This finding implies that governments and international financial institutions should rely on in-depth industry level analysis to uncover product market competition issues and set reform priorities. These analyses should include the often overlooked but critically important domestic service sectors such as retail and housing construction.
Rising Informality
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005-08) Anayiotos, Andrea; Palmade, Vincent
By some estimates more than 30 percent of the developing world's GDP and 70 percent of its workers are outside the official economy. The implications: Most small firms are trapped in low-productivity operations with little access to finance, key government services, and formal customers. Workers lack safety and social protection. And bigger, better-connected firms use unfair informal practices to beat out more productive formal competitors. The result is slower economic growth and a growing social divide between the informal and formal parts of society.
FDI Trends : Looking Beyond the Current Gloom in Developing Countries
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2004-09) Anayiotas, Andrea; Palmade, Vincent
The fall in foreign direct investment (FDI) since 1999 and China's growing share, worry most developing countries. But an in-depth look reveals new and promising trends. The decline is largely a one-time adjustment following the privatization boom of the 1990s. FDI is coming from more countries - and going to more sectors. The conditions for attracting FDI vary by sector: in labor-intensive manufacturing, for example, efficient customs, and flexible labor markets are key, while in retail, access to land and equal enforcement of tax rules matter most. Sorting out the microeconomic issues by sector will be good, not only for FDI, but also for domestic investors.