Early in 2024, the World Bank in its flagship report Global Economic Prospects, put out a message of gloom. This year could end marking “a wretched milestone: the weakest global growth performance of any half-decade since the 1990s”.
Between 2021, when the world economy showed signs of recovering from the troughs of the pandemic, and 2023, growth has been decelerating almost everywhere, with the figures at 6.2, 3.0 and 2.6 per cent for the world as a whole in 2021, 2022 and 2023 respectively (Chart 1). For most advanced economies growth in 2023 was below the average recorded during the decade 2010 to 2019, with the US just staying ahead of that figure.
The 2010-2019 figure matters because it captures the long-term impact of the prolonged Great Recession that followed the financial crisis of 2008 in the advanced economies. Having put the pandemic behind it, the world seems set to…
