Global growth will gradually strengthen towards its pre-crisis trend rate by late 2016 as activity becomes more evenly shared across the major economies and overall external imbalances are less marked than in the run-up to 2007, according to the OECD’s latest Economic Outlook. Labour markets are gradually healing in the advanced economies and risks of […]
BRUSSELS, —Economic growth is expected to continue to pick up across Europe, from zero in 2013 and 1.3 percent in 2014, to 1.8 percent and 2.0 percent in 2015 and 2016 respectively. Central and eastern European countries (EU-CEE) will continue to grow above the European average, with growth expanding over 2.4 percent in 2015, based […]
The West Bank and Gaza will need policy discipline and donor support in the short run, but a new financing model will be essential over the medium term for sustained private-sector-led growth, the IMF says. The Gazan economy is struggling to rebuild in the wake of the violent conflict last summer that resulted in losses […]
Sir Suma Chakrabarti on how to unlock the potential of the Middle East and North Africa. Gordon Brown on education and infrastructure in the region The Geo-strategic Outlook The geopolitical disorder across the Middle East and North Africa is part of a strategic competition that is playing out and could lead to major changes in […]
Today the EU and Switzerland signed a historic new tax transparency agreement, which will significantly improve the fight against tax evasion. Under the agreement, both sides will automatically exchange information on the financial accounts of each other’s residents from 2018. This spells an end to Swiss bank secrecy for EU residents and will prevent tax […]
It is such a pleasure to be back in Brazil – one of the first countries I visited as Managing Director of the IMF. It is a special pleasure to be here in Rio de Janeiro, which hosted the last IMF Annual Meetings held in Latin America – back in 1967. I am delighted to […]
My theme is taken from Jean Monnet, who in 1976 wrote: “Europe will be forged in crises, and will be the sum of the solutions adopted for those crises.”2 This quote is discussed in the interesting recent paper by Luigi Guiso, Paola Sapienza, and Luigi Zingales, whose view of Monnet’s contention can be deduced from […]
Today I would like to speak with you about the outlook for the U.S. economy. I should note at the outset that my remarks today reflect my own views and not necessarily those of others in the Federal Reserve System. The Recession and the Recovery So Far As you all know, the economy is still […]
Structural and cyclical policies – including monetary policy – are heavily interdependent. Structural reforms increase both potential output and the resilience of the economy to shocks. This makes structural reforms relevant for any central bank, but especially in a monetary union. For members of monetary union resilience is crucial to avoid that shocks lead to […]
Growth patterns are increasingly divergent in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe (CESEE), says a new report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The group of countries stretching from the Baltic states all the way to Turkey have been affected differently by external forces – oil prices, strength of the euro area recovery, and geopolitical tensions. […]