The World Economy

1995 ◽  
Vol 151 ◽  
pp. 30-52
Author(s):  
Ray Barrell ◽  
Nigel Pain ◽  
Julian Morgan
Keyword(s):  
Exchange Rate ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Output Growth ◽  
Bretton Woods ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
Exchange Rate Movements ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Output Gaps

Output growth throughout the OECD has been rising this year, and several economies including the US, Canada and the UK look as if are reaching their cyclical peak. Other economies, such as France, Italy and Spain, are still operating below capacity, but have been growing rapidly enough to prevent output gaps widening. Output gaps in Europe appear to be small, and Barrell and Sefton (below) calculate they could be approaching zero. This upturn in activity has been unlike most in the post-Bretton Woods era, as inflation has not, until recently, begun to rise. Inflation in the US was, it appears, lower in 1994 than in the previous four years, despite a strong output recovery. The appreciation of the yen, and the subsequent recession have, of course, kept Japanese inflation low. However, exchange-rate movements are part of a process of ‘sharing’ world inflation, and over the past three years there has been little to share. For example, inflation in Europe has been lower than we anticipated 18 months ago, even though a slowdown in activity was already apparent then.

The World Economy: The impact of rising oil prices and weak equity markets on global growth

2008 ◽  
Vol 205 ◽  
pp. 8-13
Author(s):  
Ray Barrell
Keyword(s):  
Central Bank ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Financial Innovation ◽  
Oil Prices ◽  
Output Growth ◽  
Sequence Of Events ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Impact

In interesting times several things may happen simultaneously, and they may have connected roots. The financial turmoil that developed initially in the US banking sector had its roots in financial innovation that had made available cheap finance and increased demand for housing. This wave of low cost finance had spread to Europe, and house prices rose in a correlated way. The increase in demand in the world economy that resulted from strong growth in lending and high asset values helped raise output growth outside the OECD, and this in turn put upward pressure on oil prices. Markets sometimes work slowly, and the effects of the increase in demand on prices appear to be coming through just as the asset bubble is collapsing. The sequence of events was not inevitable, as low personal sector saving in the US and the UK as well as elsewhere could have been offset by tighter fiscal policy, and better prudential regulation of lenders would also definitely have helped. The desire to move financial regulation from the central bank, as in the UK, may have been for good, competition based, reasons, but it has meant that financial sector oversight has not taken account of the macroeconomic implications of a wave of lending that rested on risky financial innovation and therefore it has not properly addressed the issue of systemic risk (see Barrell and Davis, 2005). The resulting financial turmoil has meant that banks have made losses, and have been unable to trust each other's solvency when making deals. As a result three month interbank rates have risen well above central bank intervention rates, as can be seen in figure 1.

Chapter II. The World Economy

1988 ◽  
Vol 126 ◽  
pp. 18-31
Author(s):  
R.J. Barrell ◽  
Andrew Gurney
Keyword(s):  
Economic Activity ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Medium Term ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
Investment Income ◽  
Income Ratio ◽  
The Uk

The upturn in economic activity that has been clearly visible for the last year in both Japan and the US now appears to be spreading to Europe. The factors affecting the upturn are diverse, but it appears to be investment led, at least in the US and Japan, and to a lesser extent in Germany and the UK. Chart 1 plots the investment to income ratio for the major four economies over the past, along with our forecast for the medium term. The investment-income ratio has fallen in France and Germany over the past ten years, but it has reached relatively high levels in Japan in the last four years.

Section I. Recent economic developments

1999 ◽  
Vol 170 ◽  
pp. 31-36
Author(s):  
Nigel Pain
Keyword(s):  
World Economy ◽  
Currency Crises ◽  
Output Growth ◽  
Japanese Economy ◽  
The Past ◽  
Global Demand ◽  
The World ◽  
Economic Developments ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Impact

The world economy appears to have embarked upon a cyclical upturn this year. Despite the widespread fears of a year ago, the downturn in global demand that began in the latter half of 1997 proved unusually mild and short-lived compared to others seen in the past three decades. Our latest projections indicate that global output growth is likely to have picked up to 2.9 per cent this year from 2.4 per cent in 1998, and may accelerate further to 3¼ per cent next year. In the OECD economies output growth has accelerated this year to 2.8 per cent, with a continued robust expansion in North America and a gradual stabilisation of the Japanese economy more than offsetting the relatively mild slowdown in the Euro Area and the UK. Elsewhere there has been a strong rebound in output in many of the Asian economies, and the impact of the currency crises in Brazil and Russia appears to have been absorbed more easily than had been expected at the time they occurred.

Chapter II. The World Economy

1983 ◽  
Vol 106 ◽  
pp. 26-38
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Industrial Production ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
West Germany ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
The Uk ◽  
A Minor ◽  
Minor Extent

The recovery in the OECD area gathered pace in the second quarter, when its total GDP probably increased by as much as 1 per cent. The rise was, however, heavily concentrated in North America and particularly the US. There may well have been a slight fall in Western Europe, where the level of industrial production hardly changed and increases in gross product in West Germany and, to a minor extent, in France were outweighed by falls in Italy and (according to the expenditure measure) the UK.

The World Economy

1997 ◽  
Vol 159 ◽  
pp. 28-56
Author(s):  
Julian Morgan ◽  
Nigel Pain ◽  
Florence Hubert
Keyword(s):  
World Trade ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Fiscal Consolidation ◽  
The Third ◽  
The North ◽  
External Demand ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
World Economic ◽  
The Uk

There are now widespread signs that activity in the world economy has begun to recover steadily from the pause in growth apparent at the beginning of 1996. Output rose by 0.6 per cent in the North American economies in the third quarter of last year and by 0.8 per cent in Europe. Business and consumer sentiment has improved gradually in recent months in most of the major economies. We expect world economic growth to pick up further over the course of this year as the contractionary effects from the downturn in world trade and prolonged inventory adjustment come to an end and as the effects from a more relaxed monetary stance begin to outweigh those from ongoing fiscal consolidation. Recent currency movements should help to stimulate external demand in Germany, France and Japan, but may act to constrain growth within the UK, Italy and the US. For both this year and 1998 we expect growth of around 2½ per cent per annum in the OECD economies.

The World Economy

2007 ◽  
Vol 200 ◽  
pp. 7-30 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Global Economy ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Housing Markets ◽  
Housing Investment ◽  
The Past ◽  
Us Economy ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
Monetary Authorities ◽  
Rates Of Growth

The global economy expanded by 5.3 per cent in 2006, one of the fastest rates of growth in the past 35 years. We project further expansions of 5 per cent this year and 4¾ per cent in 2008. The key risks to the forecast that we highlight in this Review relate to global housing markets and the current stance of monetary policy. The US economy is restrained by the recent correction in its housing market, which is expected to continue to weigh on the economy through 2008. There is some concern that the housing investment downturn may spread to other economies, and in this report we explore the areas most at risk to such a contagion. We also consider the recent volatility in the oil price, which makes it difficult for monetary authorities to distinguish signal from noise. If too much emphasis is placed on what subsequently turns out to be noise, policy settings could turn out to be overly lax or stringent.

Chapter II. The World Economy

1984 ◽  
Vol 109 ◽  
pp. 21-32
Keyword(s):  
World Economy ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Sustained Growth ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
The Uk

The growth of US GNP, which in the first quarter was responsible for the greater part of an increase of the order of 1½ per cent in the output of the whole OECD area, slowed down somewhat in the second quarter but it was still exceptionally fast. With the help mainly of sustained growth in Japan it probably kept total OECD output growing, despite the depressing effects of major strikes in West Germany and the UK. The deceleration in the US mainly reflected a reduction in stockbuilding, which in the first quarter had made the biggest contribution to the growth of demand both there and in West Germany and France.

The World Economy

2003 ◽  
Vol 183 ◽  
pp. 8-33
Keyword(s):  
South America ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Consumer Demand ◽  
Modest Improvement ◽  
Cyclical Variation ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
The Eu

Risks of a US driven slowdown in world activity have receded in the past few months, as US consumer demand remains robust. However, a worsened outlook for Germany and Japan suggests that the recovery will be more gradual than previously anticipated, in part as a consequence of the strengthening of the euro and the yen against the dollar in recent months. We estimate that world growth recorded a modest improvement in 2002, rising to 2.7 per cent from 2.2 per cent in 2001. However, regional cyclical variation increased last year. While 2001 saw a sharp slowdown in growth across all the major regions of the world, with the world's three largest economies recording outright recessions, growth accelerated last year in the US, China and Dynamic Asia, but slowed further in the EU, Japan and South America.

Disciplining the Hegemon

2021 ◽  
pp. 138-163
Author(s):  
Julian Germann
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Exchange ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Carter Administration ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
Japanese Investment ◽  
External Pressures ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Uk

This chapter argues that in order to protect its export model from the dangers of imported inflation, Germany strove to commit the US to monetary and fiscal rigor. To this end, German officials blocked the attempts of the Carter administration to organize a global Keynesian expansion, and scaled back their foreign exchange interventions in support of a weakening dollar. Both actions helped push the US into the Volcker Shock, which deflated the world economy and launched the attack on organized labor. The chapter concludes that the neoliberal experiment in the US, paralleled and reinforced by similar attempts in the UK, was late and lucky. Rather than the outcome of a decade-long domestic shift—seamless and sealed off from the world outside the Anglo-American heartland—the neoliberal counter-revolution was driven in part by the external pressures imposed by Germany, and subsequently sustained by a bout of Japanese investment.

Gearing Up for a New “Pandemic” on the Eyes

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Wang ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Social Networking ◽  
Electronic Devices ◽  
Health Problems ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
Novel Coronavirus ◽  
The Uk

As the novel coronavirus continues ravaging communities worldwide, children and adults are spending more time than ever before on their electronic devices. Social networking websites, streaming platforms, and video games accumulate hours of usage. Students and employees are turning to remote learning and working. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, teleworking was already on the rise. In the US, the population of employees working remotely increased from 19.6% in 2003 to 24.1% in 2015, and in Sweden, the prevalence of working from home jumped from 5.9% in 1999 to 19.7% in 2012 (Feldstead & Henseke, 2017). Research conducted by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) reported that the teleworking rate in the UK increased by at least 20% over the past decade. There are currently no official reports on the increase of remote working in 2020. However, given the current pandemic situation along with the rapid advancement of technology each day, the numbers are expected to be at an all-time high. This may introduce the world to a new set of health problems: the Digital Eye Strain syndrome.

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