Director’s Remarks, February 2019 NIER

"Since the turn of the year, much commentary on the world economy seems to have got itself into a rather despondent state. Whilst the Institute always make a point of trying to understand the build up of risks to our central cases (as our fan charts and boxes on EU Exit and box on Global House prices illustrates), which admittedly often fall on the downside, with the end of the second decade of the 21st century in sight we need to recall that this has been a decade of solid growth in the world economy. And given the size of the financial crisis shock, it is possible to say that the outcomes look reasonable relative to some of the catastrophic counterfactuals that we might have envisaged a decade or so ago. "