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Chapter III. The World Economy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2020

Extract

Our view of the world economy has changed very little since August, or indeed since May. In terms both of successive forecasts and of predicted changes between successive years it is very much ‘the mixture as before’ even now that we have taken a first cautious look at the prospects for 1980. We still expect total output in the member countries of OECD to increase at a steady 3 1/2 per cent a year—too slowly, that is to say, to make any significant impact on unemployment—with any decline in the rate of inflation largely concentrated in some of the smaller countries where it has been particularly high. The annual growth of world trade still seems likely to remain within a range of 4–6 per cent. As before, however, we expect a continuing improvement in the current balance of payments of the developed and the centrally planned economies at the expense both of the oil producers and of the other developing countries.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © 1978 National Institute of Economic and Social Research

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References

The National Institute is most grateful to readers who replied to the recent questionnaire about the World Economy chapter. In the light of the views which they expressed, some changes have been introduced in the present issue. In particular, material relating to the various aspects of the economy of an individual country has been brought together so that the arrangement is now mainly by country rather than by topic, values and prices are now expressed primarily in US dollars where previously SDRs were used, and the former reserves table has been replaced by one devoted to consumer prices in the smaller developed countries.