Global growth is in low gear, and the drivers of activity are changing. These dynamics raise new policy challenges. Advanced economies are growing again but must continue financial sector repair, pursue fiscal consolidation, and spur job growth. Emerging market economies face the dual challenges of slowing growth and tighter global financial conditions. This issue of the World Economic Outlook examines the potential spillovers from these transitions and the appropriate policy responses. Chapter 3 explores how output comovements are influenced by policy and financial shocks, growth surprises, and other linkages. Chapter 4 assesses why certain emerging market economies were able to avoid the classical boom-and-bust cycle in the face of volatile capital flows during the global financial crisis.

Global economic prospects have improved again, but the bumpy recovery and skewed macroeconomic policy mix in advanced economies are complicating policymaking in emerging market economies. Chapter 3 examines the prospects for inflation, particularly because inflation was remarkably stable in the wake of the Great Recession and, in fact, has become less responsive to cyclical conditions. Chapter 4 examines whether today’s fast-growing, dynamic low-income countries are likely to maintain their momentum and avoid the reversals that afflicted many such countries in the past.

This issue discusses a number of factors affecting global growth, as well as growth prospects across the world’s main countries and regions. It assesses the ongoing recovery from the global financial crisis in advanced and emerging market economies and evaluates risks, both upside and downside, including those associated with commodity prices, currency fluctuations, and financial market volatility. A special feature examines in detail causes and implications of the recent commodity price downturn; analytical chapters look at the effects of commodity windfalls on potential output and of exchange rate movements on trade.

Global growth for 2018–19 is projected to remain steady at its 2017 level, but its pace is less vigorous than projected in April and it has become less balanced. Downside risks to global growth have risen in the past six months and the potential for upside surprises has receded. Global growth is projected at 3.7 percent for 2018–19—0.2 percentage point lower for both years than forecast in April. The downward revision reflects surprises that suppressed activity in early 2018 in some major advanced economies, the negative effects of the trade measures implemented or approved between April and mid-September, as well as a weaker outlook for some key emerging market and developing economies arising from country-specific factors, tighter financial conditions, geopolitical tensions, and higher oil import bills. The balance of risks to the global growth forecast has shifted to the downside in a context of elevated policy uncertainty. Several of the downside risks highlighted in the April 2018 World Economic Outlook (WEO)—such as rising trade barriers and a reversal of capital flows to emerging market economies with weaker fundamentals and higher political risk—have become more pronounced or have partially materialized. Meanwhile, the potential for upside surprises has receded, given the tightening of financial conditions in some parts of the world, higher trade costs, slow implementation of reforms recommended in the past, and waning growth momentum.

This report describes the world economic outlook as of April 2018, projecting that advanced economies will continue to expand above their potential growth rates before decelerating, while growth in emerging markets in developing economies will rise before leveling off. It details global prospects and policies, including risks to the forecast, and essential determinants of long-term economic growth: labor force participation in advanced economies, the declining share of manufacturing jobs globally and in advanced economies, and the process through which innovative activity and technological knowledge spread across national borders.

Global activity has broadly strengthened and is expected to improve further in 2014–15, according to the April 2014 WEO, with much of the impetus for growth coming from advanced economies. Although downside risks have diminished overall, lower-than-expected inflation poses risks for advanced economies, there is increased financial volatility in emerging market economies, and increases in the cost of capital will likely dampen investment and weigh on growth. Advanced economy policymakers need to avoid a premature withdrawal of monetary accommodation. Emerging market economy policymakers must adopt measures to changing fundamentals, facilitate external adjustment, further monetary policy tightening, and carry out structural reforms. The report includes a chapter that analyzes the causes of worldwide decreases in real interest rates since the 1980s and concludes that global rates can be expected to rise in the medium term, but only moderately. Another chapter examines factors behind the fluctuations in emerging market economies’ growth and concludes that strong growth in China played a key role in buffering the effects of the global financial crisis in these economies.

The pace of recovery has disappointed in recent years, and downside risks have increased, including from heightened geopolitical tensions. These increased risks make it a priority to raise actual and potential growth. In a number of economies, an increase in public infrastructure investment can also provide support to demand and help boost potential output. And in advanced economies as well as emerging and developing economies there is a general, urgent need for structural reforms to strengthen growth potential or make growth more sustainable. The four individual chapters examine the overall global outlook, the prospects for individual countries and regions, the benefits of increased public infrastructure investment in terms of raising output, and the extent to which global imbalances have narrowed significantly since their peak in 2006.