The Global Economy in 2016

  • Top goal: a sustainable path for global growth
  • Emerging markets, developing economies face tougher conditions
  • Geopolitical tensions magnify economic challenges
  • The IMF marked some big changes in 2015 as well: the U.S. Congress passed the 2010 quota reform and China’s currency, the yuan, was added to the IMF’s basket of official currencies.

    On the personnel front, the IMF welcomed a new chief economist, Maury Obstfeld, former chair of the economics department at University of California at Berkeley. He arrived in September from the U.S. President’s Council of Economic Advisors to succeed Olivier Blanchard as the IMF’s Economic Counsellor and Director of Research.

    Shortly before the start of the new year, IMF Survey sat down with Obstfeld to discuss the past year and to look ahead to 2016.

    IMF Survey : What is your assessment of how the global economy turned out in 2015? What went better than you anticipated, and what does not look so good?

    Obstfeld: There was good news and bad news. The U.S. economy continued its solid growth and job creation, while Europe generally picked up speed and Japan remained a question mark. But with some exceptions (such as India), emerging and developing countries continued to slow in the face of falling commodity prices and tighter financial conditions, and synchronized and sustainable global growth remained elusive.

    In some countries, beyond these very general trends, there is an overlay of political or geopolitical tension that magnifies the purely economic challenges. How these tensions play out in 2016 will be a major determinant of regional and global macroeconomic outcomes. It comforts me to reflect, however, that the end of 2015 produced one piece of very good news on the international monetary system: the U.S. Congress finally approved the IMF quota reform originally agreed in 2010. Along several dimensions, that change will strengthen the IMF’s capacity to meet future stability challenges, whatever they may be.

    IMF Survey : What are the other key issues we need to pay attention to in 2016?

    Obstfeld: China will remain high on the list. Its economy is slowing as it transitions from investment and manufacturing to consumption and services. But the global spillovers from China’s reduced rate of growth, through its diminished imports and lower demand for commodities, have been much larger than we would have anticipated. Serious challenges to restructuring remain in terms of state-owned enterprise balance...

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