Development Economics and Policy Deficits

More than five years have elapsed since the onset of the Great Recession and to distress of all those affected by the slowdown, a decisive turning point continues to recede into the future. Growth rates are low in the OECD countries (1.25% in 2012-2013) and increasingly sluggish in the industrializing ones. Trade slowed sharply — to 2.5 percent — in 2013. Unemployment is a worry in many countries; and inequality is on the rise in all but a few. There are concerns in some quarters that the tempo of technical change is slowing. And although there are ways of mitigating climate change, dispersed progress on this front is proceeding at a frightening crawl.