The World Economic Outlook

Abstract

I have been asked to sum up my views on the economic outlook of the world in twenty minutes from the point of view of an older economist who has lived through many cycles of intellectual fashion (and of general waves of optimism and pessimism) and thus, if only on account of age, has had more occasion to rethink the ways of approaching the economic problems of the world than those of you who have the enviable misfortune of being younger. The one clear result I have reached is that it is no use applying established ‘models’ or methods of thought when confronted with a new situation that was largely unforeseen. You must start by asking which was the particular feature that your previous method failed to take on board. As Keynes once said, the difficult and the creative part in the progress of thought lies in discarding old ideas, a far more difficult task than inventing new ones. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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