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The slump in the yen has resulted in Germany overtaking Japan as the world’s 3 rd largest economy at market exchange rates. We expect Japan to overtake Germany yet again in the early 2030s as the yen strengthens and Japan benefits from higher productivity …
9th April 2024
There are so many uncertainties that it remains unwise to get carried away by the potential economic boost from the latest wave of weight loss drugs. Nonetheless, if use of the drugs continues to grow rapidly, it could ultimately give a significant boost …
14th March 2024
EMs will account for over half of global GDP within the next decade and almost 60% by 2050. Headlining this, India will become the world’s third-largest economy as soon as 2026. More generally, EMs with rapid population growth, the potential to develop …
11th March 2024
The high profile announcements from COP28 around renewable capacity pledges and fossil fuel usage are ambitious, but strike us as either overly optimistic or vague. While we think renewable energy consumption will increase markedly, fossil fuel usage is …
21st December 2023
Most major DMs need to shrink their primary budget deficits significantly and, for various reasons, most are likely to find it hard to do so. This will exacerbate growing worries about fiscal sustainability. Fiscal deficits increased significantly in …
20th December 2023
In this Global Economics Update , we describe eight of the biggest risks to our economic forecasts for 2024. The unusual nature of this cycle and uncertainties surrounding the transmission of monetary policy mean that the biggest risks relate to central …
30th November 2023
The sell-off in bond markets has taken a breather today, helped in part by softer data on the US labour market. However, the scale of the moves over the past week has invoked comparisons to previous financial crises that have been caused by sharp moves in …
4th October 2023
Investment in the green transition is unlikely to rise quickly enough this decade to help achieve net zero by 2050. But a greater focus on areas including renewables and electric vehicles will still probably push up investment’s share of global GDP by …
25th September 2023
The G20 summit which concluded yesterday in New Delhi supported our view that the global economy is fracturing into US and China-led blocs, and that India still leans to the former. While the statement was light on explicit policies, calls to increase …
11th September 2023
China’s push to develop the BRICS bloc into a geo-political counterweight to the G7 is likely to be thwarted by the competing interests and priorities of other member states. Nonetheless, positioning ahead of this week’s BRICS summit will provide some …
21st August 2023
EMs will account for over half of global GDP within the next decade and almost 60% by 2050. India will become the world’s third-largest economy before 2030. More generally, EMs with rapid population growth, with potential to develop into manufacturing …
26th June 2023
A series of high-level diplomatic meetings this week have raised hopes that strains in US-China relations will start to ease. But the politics of fragmentation was never likely to proceed in a linear direction. And even if there is a thaw in political …
20th June 2023
Note: We’re talking inflation and the BOJ, slowing Indian growth, and regional monetary easing in our Asia Drop-In on Thursday, 22 nd June. Register now . The female participation rate has surged over the past decade but more favourable attitudes among …
19th June 2023
How low Fed and ECB policy rates will go, when they are eventually normalised, is at least as important for financial markets as the precise timings of the ends of tightening cycles, in our view. We think both central banks will cut deeper than investors …
16th June 2023
In theory, there is plenty of scope for those countries set to age most rapidly over the coming few decades to cushion the impact on their workforces via migration and a rise in both female and older participation rates. However, in many cases, this will …
4th May 2023
The physical risks facing commercial property are substantial with extreme weather events like floods and wildfires set to increase in both the US and Europe over the coming decades. Property markets have yet to fully price these in, especially in areas …
21st April 2023
The economic impact of the Oxford malaria vaccine, which has now been approved by regulators in Ghana and Nigeria, will depend on the pace and breadth of the rollout and how long immunity lasts for. But it could potentially have a large positive impact on …
20th April 2023
While the Credit Suisse rescue might draw a line under that particular institution’s problems, it is clear that confidence in the financial sector overall is still extremely fragile. So regardless of whether more financial institutions run into trouble, …
20th March 2023
The numerous “plans for growth” that have been announced by the Government, the Opposition, and various commentators in recent months vary in their analytical rigour but all miss one crucial point: many of the reforms required to lift the UK’s pitifully …
9th March 2023
The current economic downturn will mean that short-to-medium term property performance is under-par. But over a longer horizon, we expect real estate returns to reassert their traditional position somewhere between bonds and equities. Last year was an …
2nd March 2023
While it is in America’s strategic interests to build stronger economic ties with allies to counter China’s growth, its protectionist tendencies could undermine those goals and blunt the effectiveness of its interventionist foreign policy. Our work on …
22nd February 2023
The process of “global fracturing” that we outlined in our annual Spotlight series last year will remain the dominant macro theme for the next decade. But speculation that it will result in the rise of a “petroyuan” on a scale sufficient to challenge …
17th January 2023
Although valuation premia in certain parts of the US stock market shrank significantly last year, we think there is still some room for this to continue in the coming decade and weigh on their relative performance. To re-cap, there was a marked reversal …
6th January 2023
We suspect the underperformance of US equities that has accompanied the US dollar’s slump so far this month will become a feature from mid-2023, as the currency eventually comes under sustained pressure. Since the end of October, MSCI’s USA Index has …
16th November 2022
Malaysia heads to the polls on Saturday for a general election which, if the latest opinion polls are correct, will lead to a further period of unstable and fractured politics. This reduces the chances of meaningful economic reforms being passed and …
Although relatively low equity valuations sometimes point to a greater chance of outsized returns over longer time horizons, we do not think that this is the case for China’s stock market. After all, we expect Chinese companies to face several long-term …
20th October 2022
Central banks have the tools to deal with liquidity crises arising from rising interest rates and falling asset prices. Instead, the bigger threat is that higher interest rates produce large and simultaneous falls in asset prices that threaten the …
11th October 2022
If the UK government’s “new era of fiscal policy” boosts GDP growth as planned, the UK’s long-term prospects will be much improved. But the action announced so far will not achieve this. It is even possible that, by denting the UK’s fiscal credibility, …
30th September 2022
Emerging markets will account for more than half of global GDP within the next decade. Headlining this, India is on course to become the world’s third largest economy by 2030. And EMs with rapid population growth, healthy manufacturing sectors or those …
6th September 2022
We agree with PM Modi’s assertion in his Independence Day speech over the weekend that boosting female participation in the labour force could have a major positive impact on the economy, but in truth the government’s record in this area is poor. Looking …
15th August 2022
The composition of spending changes as consumers age, with a greater proportion allocated to healthcare, food and drink, and less to education, transport and recreation. The experience of countries that have already aged significantly, such as Japan, …
1st August 2022
US equities have plunged this year, but the S&P 500’s valuation remains a long way from looking low on most measures, including Shiller’s CAPE. This is a key reason why we expect the returns from US equities over the next decade or so to fall well short …
25th July 2022
Ageing populations will be one of the main structural challenges facing many economies over the coming decades. Ahead of a series of work analysing what can be learned from countries ageing rapidly, this Update starts by looking at which those are. The …
14th July 2022
The UN’s latest population projections highlight that demographic headwinds are set to mount in almost all economies outside Africa. The most significant downward revisions were to its forecasts for China, but we still think that the ultimate decline in …
13th July 2022
At the recent ECB’s annual forum, the world’s top central bankers argued that a return to a world of low inflation was unlikely. It is true that sustained undershoots of inflation targets are probably a thing of the past. However, policymakers’ renewed …
8th July 2022
While the current rise in inflation to near double-digit rates is clearly undesirable, it begs the question of at what point the costs of sustained higher inflation outweigh the benefits. We think that the tipping point is around 5%. This suggests that it …
30th June 2022
It is still too early to assess the lasting impact of the pandemic on productivity in developed economies. But we remain optimistic that the legacy could be a positive one. Productivity growth, in terms of output per worker, has swung about over the past …
24th June 2022
Despite the sharp fall in the US stock market this year so far, US equities still appear much more highly valued than their peers in the rest of the world. While that might not tell us much about the outlook for relative returns in the near term, …
10th June 2022
A falling fertility rate and declining employment among retirement age workers pose downside risks to our long-term forecasts for Japan’s labour force and GDP growth. However, with the female participation rate still climbing from record highs and job …
7th June 2022
One benefit of the current rise in inflation, at least for governments, is that it is eroding the real value of public sector debt. But this will reverse only a small part of the pandemic-related rise in government debt ratios in DMs. And the impact on …
10th May 2022
We argued two years ago that the pandemic would accelerate changes that were already underway rather than trigger behavioural changes out of the blue. Now that most restrictions have been removed in advanced economies, spending on services and recreation …
6th May 2022
The valuations of mid- and large-cap equities in Japan have become even more attractive compared to those of their US counterparts following a further period of substantial underperformance in common-currency terms. That may bode well for their relative …
12th April 2022
The main long-run economic impact of the Ukrainian refugee crisis will be to boost the workforce of countries where the migrants settle, partially offsetting the unfavourable demographics that many of these areas face. According to the UN, some 10m …
29th March 2022
Claims that the war in Ukraine will prove to be a watershed moment that ends the dollar’s position at the heart of the global financial system are wide of the mark. It could accelerate the development of smaller trading blocs that use alternative …
23rd March 2022
Their net fall since the invasion of Ukraine means the valuations of European equities are now even lower relative to those of US stocks. While valuations have a mixed track record at predicting returns over short periods, they are key to our view that …
17th March 2022
It is highly likely that the war in Ukraine will accelerate Russia’s shift towards isolation and into autarky. (See here .) This will prevent Russia from catching up with more advanced economies, while the West will face some difficult choices as higher …
10th March 2022
One immediate effect of the war in Ukraine will be to push Russia several places down the league table of the world’s largest economies. However, the impact on the global economy over the long run will depend to a large extent on its political and …
2nd March 2022
We expect governments in advanced economies to take action to prevent public sector debt ratios from spiralling out of control as their populations age. However, this is uncertain, and the risk is some countries will end up on an unsustainable debt …
28th January 2022
Ahead of publishing our latest Long-Term Outlook next month, this Update sets out the assumptions we have made in our long term forecasts about both climate change and the efforts to prevent it. There is still huge uncertainty about whether countries will …
13th January 2022
The continued threat of new virus waves, and therefore fresh rounds of travel restrictions, suggests that global migration flows could remain subdued for a while yet. However, we continue to doubt that the pandemic will have any major lasting impact on …
16th December 2021