• World growth remains below trend at 3.3 per cent in 2013 and 3.7 per cent in 2013, little changed from our previous forecast.

• World trade will only grow slightly faster, and again below trend.

• The Euro Area will grow only slightly next year, while Japan is forecast to grow by 1.4 per cent, the US by 2.4 per cent, and China by 7.3 per cent.

• Interest rates will remain extremely low by historical standards, and inflationary pressures will remain subdued.

• The economy, after seeing zero growth in 2012, will grow by 0.7 per cent in 2013, and 1.5 per cent in 2014.

• Consumer price inflation will average 2.4 per cent this year and 2.3 per cent in 2014.

• We expect unemployment to stabilise at about 8 per cent, and to begin a sustained fall in 2015.

• We expect public sector net debt to peak in 2016–17, at about 85 per cent of GDP.

The production of this forecast is supported by the Institute's Corporate Members: Bank of England, HM Treasury, Mizuho Research Institute Ltd, the Office for National Statistics, Santander (UK) plc and by the members of the NiGEM users group.

This paper analyses the drivers and components of China's economic growth, showing that the structure of the economy is just as important as standard growth factors in determining its growth. The structural reforms that dismantled state-owned enterprises and shifted factors from agriculture to urban areas are key, as are technology transfers and know-how. Taking these factors into account, the paper shows that total factor productivity (TFP) not derived from those one-off reforms accounted for less than one-eighth of China's GDP growth during the first thirty years of the reform period. There are signs that efficiency is improving in the 2000s and productivity must continue to increase for the country to sustain its development.

Interest in examining the financial linkages of economies has increased in the wake of the 2008/9 global financial crisis. Applying the concepts of beta- and sigma-convergence of stock market returns, we assess changes over time in the degree of stock market integration of Russia and China with each other, as well as with respect to the United States, the Euro Area, and Japan. Our analysis is based on national and sectoral data spanning the period September 1995 to October 2010. Overall, we find evidence for gradually increasing convergence of stock market returns after the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the 1998 Russian financial crisis. Following a major disruption caused by the 2008/9 global financial crisis, the process of stock market return convergence resumes between Russia and China, as well as with world markets. Notably, the episode of sigma-divergence from the 2008/9 crisis is stronger for China than for Russia. We also find that the process of stock market return convergence and the impact of the recent crisis have not been uniform at the sectoral level, suggesting the potential for diversification of risk across sectors.

The article investigates the determinants of consumer price inflation in China. While inflation has been entirely driven by international factors, such as food and energy prices, in the period preceeding the financial crisis, domestic drivers like monetary developments and nominal wages have become increasingly important since then. Due to tight trade linkages and the presence of Chinese firms in international production chains, the changing pattern is also relevant to other countries.

The recent increase in Chinese house prices has led to concerns that China is vulnerable to asset price shocks. In this paper, we apply recently developed recursive unit root tests to spot the beginning and the end of potential speculative bubbles in Chinese house price cycles. Overall, we find that except for 2009–10 actual house prices are not significantly disconnected from fundamentals. Thus, the evidence for speculative house price bubbles in China is in general weak.

We investigate trends in regional cost competitiveness in China's four regions (Coastal, Northeast, Interior and West) over the past thirty-five years. We find that the Coastal region lost its initial cost competitiveness as its higher relative labour productivity (RLP) was offset by rapidly rising relative nominal labour costs (RNLC) due to rising wages. The Northeastern region still has cost advantages in the traditional Manufacturing sector. The Interior and West regions improved their competitiveness in most industries due to low RNLCs. There is convergence of relative unit labour cost (RULC) in all industries before 1995, but only in Finance after 1995. However there is convergence in RLP in five industries in 1978–95 and 1995–2009, offering prospects for robust growth for China into the future.