The Great Synchronisation

This is a preview from the National Institute Economic Review, May 2018, no 244.

This Box, prepared by NIESR Senior Economist Jason Lennard, investigates the degree to which economic growth has been synchronised across twenty OECD countries from the first age of globalisation to the present.

"After a long, secular decline in the dispersion of world economic growth, 2017 was by this measure the most synchronous year on record. Of the twenty advanced economies in the sample, the minimum rate of growth was 0.7 per cent, while the highest was 3.2 per cent. The simple fact that growth was positive in all countries is rare, occurring in only sixteen years since the 1870s".