Today the global economy is facing down the threat of a multifaceted crisis. Sustained by ultra-low interest rates and unprecedented levels of quantitative easing since the last global financial crisis, the global economy is taking a sharp turn toward tighter monetary policy as it experiences...

This report discusses the economic impact of the Coronavirus/COVID-19 crisis across industries, and countries. It also provides estimates of the potential global economic costs of COVID-19, and the GDP growth of different countries. The current draft includes estimates for 30 countries, under...

In this short book, Robert Barro, one of the world's leading economists, examines the causes and consequences of the financial crash. In particular, he looks at the effects of fiscal stimulus packages and suggests that, whilst they may lead to an immediate positive impact on growth, the effect...

The OECD framework for estimating potential output is combined with previous OECD empirical research to analyse the causes of recent weak productivity growth. Current weak labour productivity growth in many OECD countries reflects historically weak contributions from both total factor...

Current weak labour productivity growth in many OECD countries reflects historically weak contributions from both total factor productivity (TFP) growth and capital deepening. The slowdown in trend productivity growth in the pre-crisis period is mostly explained by a long-established slowdown in...

During the ongoing financial crisis the analysis of similar historical crises has gained more and more attention among economic researchers and forecasters. Existing studies, however, do not tackle the immense heterogeneity that is present in cross-country samples in a formal and consistent way....

This paper assesses the OECD’s projections for GDP growth and inflation during the global financial crisis and recovery, focussing on lessons that can be learned. The projections repeatedly over-estimated growth, failing to anticipate the extent of the slowdown and later the weak pace of the...

We introduce a financial stress index developed by the Office of Financial Research (OFR FSI) and detail its purpose, construction, interpretation, and use in financial market monitoring. Using a logistic regression framework and dates of government intervention in the financial system as a...

We study the real-time signals provided by the Aruoba-Diebold-Scotti Index of Business conditions (ADS) for tracking economic activity at high frequency. We start with exit from the Great Recession, comparing the evolution of real-time vintage beliefs to a “final” late-vintage chronology....

We build an agent-based dynamical system for the global economy to investigate and analyze financial crises. The agents are large aggregates of a subeconomy, and the global economy is a collection of subeconomies. We use well-known theories of dynamical systems to represent a financial crisis as...