This year’s conference has a very topical title “Will the Global Economic Environment Constrain U.S. Growth and Employment?” Indeed, the prospects for the full recovery of the U.S. economy and the normalisation of its monetary policy are of utmost importance but can only be properly assessed in an international context.
Conversely, international spillovers from the U.S. to the other economies must be well understood, to appreciate the most likely scenarios for the global economy. Nine years after the inception of the Great Recession, it is no secret that economists and policy-makers are baffled and disappointed with the lacklustre nature of the ongoing recovery.