The world economy has experienced four global recessions over the past seven decades: in 1975, 1982, 1991, and 2009. During each of these episodes, annual real per capita global GDP contracted, and this contraction was accompanied by weakening of other key indicators of global economic activity....

Following the economic and political reforms of the 1990s, the Peruvian economy experienced two decades of exceptional growth in the 2000s. How was inequality affected by the strong growth performance of 2004-19? Which were the main factors associated with these inequality changes? The...

A sizeable literature suggests that financial sector development could be an important enabler of the growth benefits of trade openness. We provide a comprehensive analysis of how financial development can affect the relationship between trade openness and growth using a dynamic panel threshold...

There is an important debate about how economies with different exchange rate regimes performed during the Great Recession and its ensuing recovery. While economic theory suggests that economies with fixed exchange rates are more affected and recover more slowly from global shocks than economies...

There is a well-established literature that documents the failure of the uncovered interest parity (UIP) condition. While a host of factors have been examined as possible reasons behind this result, the role of uncertainty is not fully understood. In this paper, we examine the extent to which...

This paper analyzes cycles in policy interest rates in 24 advanced economies over 1970–2024, combining a new application of business cycle methodology with rich time-series decompositions of the shocks driving rate movements. “Rate cycles” have gradually evolved over time, with less...

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on debt, puts recent debt developments and prospects in historical context, and analyzes new policy challenges associated with debt resolution. The paper reports three main results. First, even before the pandemic, a rapid...

Global growth prospects have deteriorated significantly since the beginning of the year, raising the specter of global recession. This paper relies on insights gleaned from previous global recessions to analyze the recent evolution of economic activity and policies and presents plausible...

Potential output growth around the world slowed over the past two decades. This slowdown is expected to continue in the remainder of the 2020s: global potential growth is projected to average 2.2 percent per year in 2022-30, 0.4 percentage point below its 2011-21 average. Emerging market and...

Across the world, a structural growth slowdown is underway: at current trends, the global potential growth rate—the maximum rate at which an economy can grow without igniting inflation—is expected to fall to a three-decade low over the remainder of the 2020s. The slowdown could be even more...