There is no shortage of hope – and hype – about what artificial intelligence could do for productivity and economic growth in the future. But we must bear in mind that our politics have proven too dysfunctional, and our policies too misguided, to manage even the most obvious threats to our future.

Despite analysts’ increasingly optimistic forecasts for the coming year, the risks to global growth are still tilted to the downside. In fact, recent developments in China, Europe, and the United States suggest that the world economy’s biggest challenges may lie ahead.

Despite its original stated goal, US antitrust policy has always been used merely to ensure the free entry of competitors into all markets, rather than to address the problem of market power. But in the age of Big Tech, this approach has become woefully inadequate.

The unexpected resilience of the global economy in 2023 has led many analysts to adopt an optimistic outlook for the upcoming year. But given the escalating crisis in the Middle East and persistent market volatility, the chances of a robust worldwide economic recovery appear slim.

American progressives, together with populists and nationalists on the right, argue that “every billionaire is a policy failure” and propose applying special taxes to them. But bashing the ultra-wealthy is based on flawed ideas about income inequality and sends the message that success is a dirty word.

Heading into 2024, most economists and market analysts have adopted a baseline scenario in which most major economies avoid both a recession and renewed inflation – the much-desired "soft landing." But the current encouraging consensus could still be derailed by any number of factors, not least geopolitics.

As geopolitical tensions spike and interest rates remain elevated, 2024 is poised to be yet another tumultuous year for the world economy. This is especially true for emerging markets, which managed to avert a crisis in 2023 but could struggle to do so again if global growth fails to meet expectations.

Contrary to many Western analysts’ expectations, the shift from a unipolar to a multipolar world economy will not lead to a China-led alternative order but to global instability. Amid deepening economic fragmentation, leaders must forestall a rapid descent into chaos by strengthening the existing multilateral architecture.

The long-standing economic consensus that interest rates would remain low indefinitely, making debt cost-free, is no longer tenable. Even if inflation declines, soaring debt levels, deglobalization, and populist pressures will keep rates higher for the next decade than they were in the decade following the 2008 financial crisis.

Once again, larger deficits and higher debt-to-GDP ratios in rich countries have become fodder for fiscal hawks and bond vigilantes to warn of a looming crisis that will demand a return to austerity. But the case for such pessimism has no logical or historical basis.

Despite an increasingly challenging economic and geopolitical environment, the global economy performed better than expected over the past year. But although analysts’ projections for 2023 were too pessimistic, it appears that consensus forecasts for the coming year may have have swung too far in the opposite direction.

More than two years after economists divided into opposing camps over the nature of the post-pandemic inflation, we now know which side was right. Disinflation has confirmed that the earlier price increases were “transitory,” driven largely by supply disruptions and sectoral shifts in demand.

Contrary to many analysts’ expectations, emerging markets have not spiraled into a debt crisis. This can be partly attributed to central banks’ decision to reject populist policy proposals in favor of a modern iteration of macroeconomic orthodoxy.

After having maintained near-zero interest rates for decades, the Japanese central bank may be forced to hike rates if inflation remains persistently high. But Japan’s enormous government debt and vulnerable banking sector mean that doing so could trigger a systemic financial crisis.

To prevent catastrophic climate change and accelerate the global transition to a net-zero economy, policymakers and asset owners urgently need to rethink how we channel capital at scale. The key is to develop new financial instruments that are profitable, liquid, and easily accessible to savers and investors globally.

Whatever stories Americans are told about the strength of the economy under President Joe Biden, they are not going to be persuaded to look past the issue of their own living standards. For most Americans, these have declined somewhat as price increases have outpaced wage growth.

While some economists may argue that secular stagnation is to blame for China’s economic slowdown, concerns about sustained slower growth are overblown. If the country falls into a recession, it would constitute the next turn of the debt supercycle that began in the US in 2008 and moved to Europe in 2010.

With so many moving pieces, and under such unconventional conditions, navigating today’s global economic landscape would be challenging for anyone. But even if we cannot anticipate every contingency, we can understand quite a lot by assessing the US Federal Reserve’s prospects for engineering a soft economic landing in the near term.

After 17 months of intense fighting, the costs of rebuilding Ukraine will most likely be far higher than previously expected. European countries, which have repeatedly pledged to support Ukraine but have contributed relatively little to its defense thus far, must coordinate and facilitate this effort.

Although past performance is never a guarantee of future results, it remains the case that stock-market valuations tend to outstrip bonds most of the time. Still, arriving at the best investment strategy is about more than simply doing the math; it also requires an appreciation of history and tail risks.

Multilateral development banks are the only institutions that provide the combination of expertise, staying power, low-cost financing, leverage, and knowledge-sharing capabilities needed to assist developing countries. But to help transform these countries' future, the MDBs must first transform themselves.

The Chinese economy’s current travails illustrate the growth challenges facing many other countries around the world. By re-engineering ineffective growth models and improving domestic economic management, developed and developing countries can avoid falling into the growth trap China now finds itself in.

For decades, rich countries have urged developing countries to shift away from fossil fuels while failing to heed their own advice or offer meaningful funding. Kenyan President William Ruto’s recent call to establish a new “global green bank” is the sort of thoughtful proposal that developed countries must seriously consider.

While a severe hurricane for the global economy looks less likely than a few months ago, we are still likely to encounter a tropical storm that could cause significant damage. Much will depend on how major central banks confront the trilemma of simultaneously maintaining price, growth, and financial stability.

The latest last-minute deal to raise the US debt limit does not solve the underlying political problem. On the contrary, with the country on track for a Biden-Trump rematch next year – a contest that Trump just might win – the truce is likely to be short-lived.

The G7 countries may have set out to deter China without escalating the new cold war, but the perception in Beijing suggests that they failed to thread the needle at their recent summit in Hiroshima.

The US Federal Reserve is adrift, and it has only itself to blame. Regardless of whether its policy-setting committee announces another interest-rate hike in June, its top priority now should be to address the structural weaknesses that led it astray in the first place.

Despite US efforts to de-escalate tensions with China and Chinese officials’ wariness of economic decoupling, attempting to restore trust between the two powers seems futile. In this increasingly fraught climate, fragmentation trumps cooperation, and the danger of a military conflict over Taiwan looms large.

Despite its commitment to curbing China’s geopolitical ambitions, the Biden administration has done little to counter the country’s expanding economic footprint in South America. Given the region’s crucial role in the fight against climate change, the US can no longer afford to take its southern neighbors for granted.

The US Federal Reserve's growing list of policymaking, supervisory, and communications failures is becoming increasingly consequential not just for Americans but also for the rest of the world.

In the face of high and persistent inflation, recession risks, and now a looming insolvency crisis in the financial sector, central banks like the US Federal Reserve are facing a trilemma.

The bipartisan push to ban TikTok in the US reflects both the growing distrust of China and lawmakers’ limited understanding of the tech world.

The reversal of decades of economic integration will leave the global economy with higher inflation and reduced growth potential. In this new era, governments, companies, and long-term investors will need to incorporate more sophisticated geopolitical and sociopolitical analyses into their strategies.

While the sanctions regime imposed on Russia has dented its economy, it is far less severe than those imposed on North Korea and Iran, which included penalties on third-party countries. Imposing secondary sanctions could tighten the screws on Putin, but also accelerate deglobalization.

Sound policymaking has helped India modernize and achieve robust economic growth, positioning it to become an increasingly important player on the world stage.

As US inflation gradually eases, the claim that today’s inflationary pressures are the result of a temporary supply shock has re-emerged.

It is hard to reconcile the jubilant mood of many business leaders with the uncertainty caused by the war in Ukraine.

Whatever one’s favored terminology for describing the current moment, there is widespread agreement that we are facing unprecedented, unusual, and unexpected levels of uncertainty, auguring a future of crisis, instability, and conflict.

With inflation on the rise and the era of ultra-low interest rates over, financial markets will face a huge stress test in 2023.

Advanced economies and emerging markets are increasingly engaged in necessary "wars" – some real, some metaphorical – that will lead to even larger fiscal deficits, more debt monetization, and higher inflation on a persistent basis.

Over the past two years, the US Federal Reserve has repeatedly erred in its analysis, policymaking, communications, and governance.

After years of ultra-loose fiscal, monetary, and credit policies and the onset of major negative supply shocks, stagflationary pressures are now putting the squeeze on a massive mountain of public- and private-sector debt.

The global economy’s dire and deteriorating prospects, together with the scale of the climate challenge, have apparently opened world leaders’ eyes to the risks that deglobalization poses. But it remains to be seen whether this realization will be followed by the action needed to reverse course.

With a storyline full of celebrities, politicians, sex, and drugs, the future looks bright for producers of feature films and documentaries about the astonishing collapse of FTX.

Gone are the days when China could point to soaring real-estate prices and rising incomes to justify endless new construction.

After enjoying a long period of deflationary conditions, the global economy is being pushed by a wide range of forces toward a new and more difficult equilibrium.

The World Bank should be a major vehicle for crisis response, post-conflict reconstruction, and, most importantly, for supporting the huge investments necessary for sustainable and healthy global development.

The Great Moderation has given way to the Great Stagflation, which will be characterized by instability and a confluence of slow-motion negative supply shocks.

After previously eschewing interest-rate hikes, the US Federal Reserve has been tightening monetary policy at an unprecedented rate.

Despite August’s disappointing inflation numbers, the US economy is uniquely equipped to mitigate and overcome the current price surge, owing to its relative energy and food independence, abundance of immigrant labor, strong production capacity, and the capital needed to boost domestic manufacturing.