The buildup in government debt in response to the “great recession,” has raised a number of policy dilemmas for individual countries as well as the world as a whole. The recent need for a change of fiscal policy stance has fuelled debates about the impact of fiscal consolidation on domestic economies that are tightening, the flow-on effects to the world economy, and also about how much tightening there should be and how quickly it should happen. This paper explores these issues in a global framework focusing on the national and global consequences of coordinated fiscal consolidation. It explores the implications this fiscal adjustment might have on country risk premia and what happens if all countries coordinate their fiscal adjustment except the United States. A coordinated fiscal consolidation in the industrial world that is not accompanied by U.S. actions is likely to lead to a substantial worsening of trade imbalances globally as the release of capital in fiscally contracting economies flows into the U.S. economy, appreciates the U.S. dollar, and worsens the current account position of the United States. The scale of this change is likely to be sufficient to substantially increase the probability of a trade war between the United States and other economies. To avoid this outcome, a coordinated fiscal adjustment is clearly in the interest of the global economy.

This paper models the global financial crisis as a combination of shocks to global housing markets and sharp increases in risk premia of firms, households, and international investors; and finds that the shocks observed in financial markets can generate in the in the G-Cubed model (an intertemporal global model) the severe economic contraction in global trade and production currently being experienced in 2009. Our investigation shows that the distinction between the production and trade of durable and non-durable goods plays a key role in explaining the much larger contraction in trade than GDP experienced by most economies; and that the future of the global economy depends critically on whether the shocks to risk are expected to be permanent or temporary.

The world is in the midst of a significant demographic transition with potential implications for the macroeconomic performance of the global economy. This paper summarizes the key features of current and projected demographic change. It then applies a new 10-region global model (an extended version of the MSG-Cubed model) incorporating demographic dynamics, to examine the consequences of projected global demographic change on the world economy from 2005 to 2050. A distinction is made between the effects on each country of its own demographic transition and the effects on each country of demographic changes occurring in the rest of the world.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an assessment of the global economic impacts of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) as well as to provide a more comprehensive approach to estimating the global consequences of major disease outbreaks. Our empirical estimates of the economic effects of the SARS epidemic are based on a global model called the G-Cubed (Asia Pacific) model. Most previous studies on the economic effects of epidemics focus on the disease-associated medical costs or forgone incomes resulting from disease-related morbidity and mortality, but the most significant real costs of SARS have been generated by changes in spending behavior by households and firms in affected countries. This study estimates the cost of the SARS outbreak by focusing on the impacts on consumption and investment behavior through changes in the cost and risk of doing business. Through increased economic interdependence, these changes in behavior have wide-ranging general equilibrium consequences for the world economy that can lead to economic losses well in excess of the traditional estimates of the cost of disease.

Our simulations of a global macroeconomic model suggest that China's WTO accession could create significant welfare losses in the ASEAN-4 if foreign direct investment (FDI) is significantly redirected away from these countries toward China, and if the ASEAN-4 countries are unable to implement policies to make up for the slower rate of technological diffusion from the reduced FDI inflow. If the ASEAN-4 do not fall behind technologically, then they will be able to find lucrative niches within the lengthened international manufacturing production chains. The ASEAN-4 must therefore strengthen their abilities to absorb new foreign technologies quickly and to engage in indigenous technical innovations.

This paper explores the composition of the macroeconomic policy packages that would be effective in stimulating the Japanese economy. An empirical econometric model is used to predict the consequences of a monetary stimulus consisting of an open-market purchase of government bonds by the Bank of Japan combined with the announcement and implementation of inflation targeting in Japan. The paper also compares the impacts of permanent, temporary, and phased fiscal adjustments. The model predicts that monetary policy would be effective in stimulating the Japanese economy through causing a depreciation of the yen. Similarly, a substantial fiscal consolidation in Japan would be only mildly contractionary for the first two years but then would yield substantial long-term benefits to the Japanese economy. Combining a credible fiscal contraction that is phased in over three years with an inflation target would be likely to provide a powerful macroeconomic stimulus to the Japanese economy, through a weaker exchange rate and lower long-term real interest rates, and would sustain higher growth in Japan for a decade. Thus, a switch in the macroeconomic policy mix toward a loose monetary policy (e.g., setting inflation targets between 2 and 3 percent) and a tight fiscal policy is likely to be an important part of a successful package of reforms to raise Japanese productivity growth over the coming years.