looking beyond borders
foreign policy and global economy
Archive for the tag “GDP”
Managing Divergent Recoveries
It is one year into the COVID-19 pandemic and the global community still confronts extreme social and economic strain as the human toll rises and millions remain unemployed. Yet, even with high uncertainty about the path of the pandemic, a way out of this health and economic crisis is increasingly visible.
Read Here | IMF Blog
The Global Economy’s Uneven Recovery
While the US, China, and other leading economies are on their way to a robust recovery, many others are struggling to return to pre-pandemic GDP levels. In most regions, including Europe and Latin America, the 2020 recession will most likely leave long-lasting scars on both GDP and employment.
Read Here | Project Syndicate
Is Inflation Alive?
Inflation in most rich countries has been low since the 1990s, not least because of central banks’ success in lowering long-term inflation expectations. But today’s policymakers must weigh how far they can go in trying to engineer a post-pandemic recovery without unanchoring these firmly entrenched beliefs.
Read Here | Project Syndicate
Who’s Right On Inflation?
As in the 1970s, a severe economic shock has forced governments to pursue massive fiscal and monetary expansion, thereby sowing fears of future inflation. But not all shocks are the same, and the key question now is whether we can be confident that the current state of exception will end.
Read Here | Project Syndicate
An Ill Economic Wind Blows From Singapore
With its open and traditionally nimble economy, Singapore often plays a weathervane role for global trade trends. As such, the ill winds blowing across the city-state should worry policymakers worldwide. According to statistics released, Singapore saw a startling 12.6% annualized drop in gross domestic product (GDP) between April and June. Viewed quarter-to-quarter, GDP collapsed a whopping 41.2%.
The Great Lockdown: Worst Economic Downturn Since The Great Depression
Under the assumption that the pandemic and required containment peaks in the second quarter for most countries in the world, and recedes in the second half of this year, in the April World Economic Outlook we project global growth in 2020 to fall to -3 percent. This is a downgrade of 6.3 percentage points from January 2020, a major revision over a very short period. This makes the Great Lockdown the worst recession since the Great Depression, and far worse than the Global Financial Crisis.
How Poverty Ends
For all the worries today about the explosion of inequality in rich countries, the last few decades have been remarkably good for the world’s poor. Between 1980 and 2016, the average income of the bottom 50 percent of earners nearly doubled, as this group captured 12 percent of the growth in global GDP.
With Growth This Bad, India Needs More Than Luck
With India’s growth tumbling to 4.5% from 8.1% in little more than a year, you’d be surprised to know that Shaktikanta Das has one of the easiest jobs in central banking. He just has to keep doing what he’s been doing since becoming governor of the Reserve Bank of India last December: cut interest rates. Fortunately, political will is on his side.
The US Economy’s Dirty Secret
There is a dirty little secret in economics today: the United States has benefited – and continues to benefit – from the global slump. The US economy is humming along, even while protesters in the United Kingdom hurl milkshakes at Brexiteers, French President Emmanuel Macron confronts nihilist yellow-vested marchers, and Chinese tech firms such as Huawei fear being frozen out of foreign markets.
