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Global Growth Plateaus as Economic Risks Materialize

2019-03-13T13:33:15-04:00October 8, 2018|

By Maurice Obstfeld

October 9, 2018

عربي, 中文, Español, Français, Baˈhasa indoneˈsia, 日本語, Русский

Uncertainty over trade policy is becoming a drag on economic activity (photo: Imagine China/Newscom)

The latest World Economic Outlook report projects that global growth will remain steady over 2018–19 at last year’s rate of 3.7 percent. This growth exceeds that achieved in any of the years between 2012 and 2016. It occurs as many economies have reached or are nearing full employment and as earlier deflationary fears have dissipated. Thus, policymakers still have an excellent opportunity to build resilience and implement growth-enhancing reforms.

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The Global Expansion: Still Strong but Less Even, More Fragile, Under Threat

2019-03-14T09:28:49-04:00July 16, 2018|

By Maurice Obstfeld

July 16, 2018

Versions in عربي, Baˈhasa indoneˈsia, 中文, Español, Français, 日本語, Português, Русский 

The escalation of trade tensions is the greatest near-term threat to global growth (photo: wildpixel/Getty Images by iStock)

Amid rising tensions over international trade, the broad global expansion that began roughly two years ago has plateaued and become less balanced. […]

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Economic Preparedness: The Need for Fiscal Space

2019-03-14T10:06:20-04:00June 27, 2018|

By Vikram Haksar, Marialuz Moreno-Badia, Catherine Pattillo and Murtaza Syed

June 27, 2018

Versions in عربي,  中文, Baˈhasa indoneˈsia,  日本語, Português

Countries must assess the amount of room in their budgets for increasing spending or cutting taxes (photo: Martin Barraud/iStock by Getty Images)

How much leeway national policymakers have for increasing spending or cutting taxes has been hard to assess. […]

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5 Things You Need to Know About the IMF and Climate Change

2019-03-14T10:35:05-04:00June 8, 2018|

By Ian Parry

June 8, 2018

Versions in  عربي,  中文,  Español, Français, 日本語, Português, Русский 

A polar bear on shrinking ice in the Arctic: climate change means the world is getting hotter (photo: Sven-Erik Arndt/Newscom)

The world is getting hotter, resulting in rising sea levels, more extreme weather like hurricanes, droughts, and floods, as well as other risks to the global climate like the irreversible collapsing of ice sheets.  […]

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Chart of the Week: Distribution of Globalization’s Gains

2019-03-14T11:37:23-04:00May 31, 2018|

By IMFBlog

May 31, 2018

A garment factory in Ethiopia, which globalization has helped to boost its growth (photo: Kay Neitfeld/Newscom).

While globalization is generally good for economic growth, the benefits are subject to diminishing marginal returns, according to a recent study of 147 countries from 1970 to 2014. The study looks at how globalization affects the distribution of incomes across and within countries.   […]

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Chart of the Week: Greenery and Prosperity

2019-03-14T11:46:08-04:00May 21, 2018|

By João Tovar Jalles and Prakash Loungani

May 21, 2018

Versions in  中文, Español, Français, 日本語,  Português 

Brandenburg, Germany: in three advanced economies—Germany, the United Kingdom, and France—emissions have fallen despite the increase in incomes (photo: Caro / Kaiser/Newscom).

Economic growth has traditionally moved in tandem with pollution. But can countries break this link and manage to grow while lowering pollution?

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Risky Business: Reading Credit Flows for Crisis Signals

2019-03-14T12:50:45-04:00April 10, 2018|

By Claudio Raddatz Kiefer and Jérôme Vandenbussche 

April 10, 2018

Versions in عربي (Arabic),  中文 (Chinese),  Español (Spanish),  Français (French), 日本語 (Japanese), Português  (Portuguese), Русский (Russian)

The odds of a severe economic downturn are higher when a growing portion of credit flows to riskier firms, according to a new IMF study (Photo: Pali 137/ iStock by Getty Images).

Supervisors who monitor the health of the financial system know that a rapid buildup of debt during an economic boom can spell trouble down the road. That is why they keep a close eye on the overall volume of credit in the economy. When companies go on a borrowing spree, supervisors and regulators may decide to put the brakes on credit growth.

Trouble is, measuring credit volume overlooks an important question: how much of that additional money flows to riskier companies – which are more likely to default in times of trouble—compared with more creditworthy firms? The IMF’s latest Global Financial Stability Report seeks to fill that gap by constructing measures of the riskiness of […]

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The Current Economic Sweet Spot Is Not the “New Normal”

2019-03-14T15:55:30-04:00January 22, 2018|

By Maurice Obstfeld

January 22, 2018

Versions in عربي (Arabic),  中文 (Chinese),  Español (Spanish), Français (French), 日本語 (Japanese),  Русский (Russian)

Global growth continues to pick up and is broad based. But no matter how tempting it is to sit back and enjoy the sunshine, policy can and should move to strengthen the recovery (photo: Mumbai, India, Ingram Publishing/Newscom).

As the year 2018 begins, the world economy is gathering speed. The new World Economic Outlook Update revises our forecast for the world economy’s growth in both 2018 and 2019 to 3.9 percent. For both years, that is 0.2 percentage points higher than last October’s forecast, and 0.2 percentage points higher than our current estimate of last year’s global growth. […]

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