Over the longer term it will be possible to disentangle the amount of slack on the basis of the behavior of prices and wages as the levels of resource utilization in economies rise, but it would be better to understand why growth has been so slow without experiencing either a runup in inflation or a descent into deflation.
2  See Greg Howard, Robert Martin, and Beth Anne Wilson (2011), “Are Recoveries from Banking and Financial Crises Really So Different?” International Finance Discussion Papers 1037 (Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, November). 3  This calculation compares the IMF WEO’s forecast for global growth 5 years ahead from the April 2008 WEO to the WEO July 2014 forecast.