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At first sight, the latest batch of flash PMIs suggests that recoveries in advanced economies are heading in different directions. However, this has a lot to do with individual economies being in different stages of fighting the virus and easing …
21st August 2020
In the advanced economies, the post-lockdown rebound in retail sales has been considerably faster than that in industrial production. But in China, the opposite has been true. This partly reflects the differing focus of policy and highlights the role of …
17th August 2020
GDP data for Q2 revealed sharp declines in activity in all major economies except China, driven primarily by slumps in consumer spending. Retail sales data for May and June pointed to an encouragingly sharp rebound, leaving sales above their pre-virus …
13th August 2020
The development of a vaccine would represent a breakthrough in the public health battle against Covid-19, but it would not necessarily transform the immediate economic outlook. President Putin yesterday announced that Russia had become the first country …
12th August 2020
Data for Q2 revealed widespread drops in GDP, but the extent of the damage varied markedly depending on the length and severity of lockdowns. Recoveries since then have followed the same pattern. Looking ahead, Asian economies including China and Korea …
6th August 2020
While high-frequency mobility data should be interpreted with caution, they are now consistent with a marked slowdown in the pace of recovery, dashing hopes of a V-shaped rebound in the world economy. July saw a pronounced acceleration in the spread of …
5th August 2020
While the future of the virus is very uncertain, three things seem clear from recent developments: the pandemic has entered its fifth phase; the Americas are still the global hotspots; and containment measures are more likely to be extended or tightened …
4th August 2020
While the global manufacturing PMI rose again in July, it masked a divergence in the strength of recoveries among major economies. With growing concerns in recent weeks over a resurgence in the virus in many parts of the world, the recovery of global …
3rd August 2020
While the auto sector was hit particularly hard by the virus lockdowns, sales and production now seem to be recovering. In the near term, this bodes well for economies which rely heavily on vehicle production including Germany, Japan and Czechia. However, …
Table of Key Forecasts Global Overview – The initial rapid pick-up in economic activity has offered encouragement after an almost unprecedented recession. But households and firms will remain in cautious mode, preventing a full V-shaped recovery. And …
27th July 2020
Data from the CPB Netherlands Bureau showed a further fall in world trade in May. Admittedly, the decline in trade so far this year has been smaller than the collapse in GDP might have led us to fear and timelier data are consistent with an improvement in …
24th July 2020
Jumps in the European PMIs and further increases elsewhere were another sign that activity in advanced economies continued to improve in July. However, the pace of the recovery is now likely to ease. We estimate that the developed markets composite PMI …
There has been an encouraging rebound in retail sales across advanced economies as lockdowns have eased, driven by a pick-up in sales of discretionary items such as clothing and furniture and a shift towards online sales. While the recovery should …
16th July 2020
In general, our Covid Recovery Trackers continued to improve at the end of Q2 and in the first ten days of July. Things are even looking up a bit in Latin America. But the US recovery risks going into reverse. Our global average tracker maintained its …
14th July 2020
On the face of it, history doesn’t offer much reassurance that the world economy will be able to return to the path it would have been on had it not been for COVID-19. Indeed, looking back at all the downturns that have taken place in the OECD since 1965, …
13th July 2020
Hard data for May generally revealed sharp improvements in activity, particularly retail spending, albeit not to pre-virus levels. This led us to revise our forecasts for several economies including the US, UK and euro-zone, where we now expect falls in …
9th July 2020
Renewed coronavirus outbreaks in some parts of the world have not caused us to rip up our economic forecasts. The initial stages of the recovery have been faster than we feared and we had always assumed that a limited recurrence of the virus would cause …
7th July 2020
Our Recovery Trackers suggest that activity generally continued to rebound heading into Q3. But higher infections seem to have taken a toll in some US states, while Latam is the weakest link in the global recovery. Our proprietary Covid Recovery Trackers …
2nd July 2020
Uptake of central bank lending facilities has been mixed But lending is reaching firms, either through governments or central banks… … and central bank backstops are offering important reassurance to investors This month has seen a further shift among the …
With lockdowns continuing to ease across the globe, it was of little surprise that the manufacturing PMIs rose in June. While the PMIs are still considerably below their pre-crisis levels, they have rebounded more swiftly than they did during the …
1st July 2020
It is by no means inevitable that the coronavirus crisis puts a big permanent hole in the supply capacity of economies (i.e. their ability to produce goods and services). With the right government policies, many economies should be able more or less to …
29th June 2020
April’s world trade data confirmed that coronavirus restrictions have taken a very heavy toll on trade flows. But the damage has been slightly less severe than we had feared and more timely data from early-reporting economies offer hope that the worst is …
25th June 2020
Table of Key Forecasts Overview – Over the next few months, inflation will be dominated by oil price effects as the previous slump unwinds and headline rates rise from their current lows. Some components of core inflation, such as airfares and …
The latest batch of DM flash PMIs generally came out below 50, which might suggest that output fell a bit further in June compared to May. But we should not read too much into the precise level of the PMIs. The point is that they have come back a long way …
23rd June 2020
As long as social distancing isn’t practised for many years, then those behavioural changes triggered specifically by the coronavirus crisis will probably prove temporary. But those changes that were already underway and which have been supercharged by …
Available data suggest that world GDP will fall by around 8% q/q in Q2. While China has seen some recovery, GDP in southern Europe probably fell by as much as 25% on the quarter and India appears to have seen a similar drop. (See Chart 1.) Thankfully, …
15th June 2020
To help clients get a better sense of the state of recoveries around the world, we have collated some daily indicators that are available in almost all major economies to construct composite Covid Recovery Trackers . The trackers are now published on our …
12th June 2020
This Update draws together the conclusions from the various pieces of research that we have published in recent weeks on how the fiscal costs of the crisis will be dealt with. In short, we are generally sanguine about the rise in government debt, which we …
10th June 2020
Data so far have shown a significant variation in how the virus has affected activity, with economies in Southern Europe hit very hard, the US suffering somewhat less and some Asian economies relatively unscathed. Differences are related to the timing and …
9th June 2020
Public sector debt to GDP ratios are going to rise sharply and, in most cases, governments can tolerate this. But to retain the faith of financial markets, they might still need to make sure that debt is on a stable trajectory. For most, this is not a …
5th June 2020
On the face of it, the surge in unemployment in the US implies that households are being hit harder by the crisis than those in Europe. But much of this reflects differences in the way that furloughed workers are being treated in the data. Taking this and …
3rd June 2020
May’s PMIs offer evidence that the global industrial sector is now on the slow road to recovery. But with demand extremely weak, activity is still far below normal levels and price pressures have eased. While the global manufacturing PMI partially …
1st June 2020
Given that the lockdowns were implemented in most countries in March, the 1.4% m/m contraction in world trade volumes seems fairly muted. However, the global number was flattered by a sharp rebound in China as shutdowns there eased. And more timely data …
27th May 2020
Unlike the period after the global financial crisis, we doubt that we will see a widespread trend of austerity to reduce public sector debt ratios. Nonetheless, austerity will still be undertaken in a few isolated cases, primarily in emerging markets. And …
26th May 2020
On the face of it, it might look like major economies have not yet reached the stage of debt monetisation. Where central banks are buying government bonds, it is on the secondary market, is supposed to be only temporary and the primary aim is not to fund …
22nd May 2020
May’s Flash PMIs revealed a partial rebound, suggesting that the global economy is past the nadir. But, the recovery in advanced economies appeared slower than that in China, and the services sector remains particularly weak. With lockdown measures …
21st May 2020
Inflation is the not the easy fix for the coronavirus-related rise in public sector debt that it might seem. Not only might it not actually do much to reduce public sector debt ratios, but higher inflation would impose other serious costs on economies. …
20th May 2020
After falling by around 6% q/q in Q1, world GDP looks set for an equally sharp slump in the second quarter. As major advanced economies are following Asia’s lead in easing containment measures, global activity has hopefully passed its trough. …
19th May 2020
The future of the coronavirus and measures to contain it are highly uncertain and beyond economists’ expertise. Nonetheless, both will be important in determining the outlook for the global economy and we have therefore made assumptions based on what is …
15th May 2020
Our best guess is that business surveys, such as the PMIs, understated falls in activity in April and we suspect that the next batch of surveys, released as early as next week, will do so again in May. Despite the risk that the surveys are misrepresenting …
14th May 2020
Numerous lending facilities have been either launched, revived, or expanded Many aim to provide liquidity to financial institutions and non-financial firms But the line between liquidity operations and monetary policy is sometimes blurred Traditionally, …
7th May 2020
The impact of the lockdowns on the ability of statisticians to collect price data means that measures of inflation will be less accurate than normal. However, this will probably have little impact on economic policy because these problems are dwarfed by …
6th May 2020
The coronavirus will leave in its wake a sharp rise in public sector debt. Low interest rates suggest that many governments will be able to live with this, rather than having to resort to austerity, default or inflating the debt away. But they would still …
5th May 2020
Manufacturing PMIs for April fell sharply, but the way the surveys are constructed means that conditions may be even worse than the headline figures suggest. Indeed, the sub-components of the surveys are consistent with global industrial output …
4th May 2020
Unlike in previous downturns, residential property has not been the root cause this time. Even so, house prices will not escape this recession unscathed. If policy support proves effective, if lockdowns hamper property sales, and if demand rebounds later …
29th April 2020
While we expect to see a sharp rebound in global activity once coronavirus-related restrictions are eased, GDP in most economies will still be below its pre-crisis path even after two or three years. (See here .) In this Update , we discuss which …
Whilst the CPB world trade data showed another small drop in February, with lockdowns taking effect across much of the world in March, we expect much sharper falls in the coming months. In total, we expect the coronavirus to knock around a fifth off world …
24th April 2020
Table of Key Forecasts Global Overview – The disruption relating to the coronavirus is set to cause the steepest fall in global GDP since the Second World War. We are forecasting a 5½% contraction this year, far bigger than the 0.5% fall seen during the …
23rd April 2020
As expected, after a dreadful month in March, the Flash PMIs for advanced economies got a whole lot uglier in April. While we suspect that they are not picking up the full scale of the declines in activity, the PMIs should become more useful when it comes …
Plans to ease containment measures have raised fears of a second wave of coronavirus to come. In some ways, the world economy would be better prepared to deal with it. But the development of testing and tracking will be crucial in determining the extent …
22nd April 2020