After the speech by the IMF's Managing Director in Berlin yesterday, my main messages on the global outlook will not surprise you.

Starting with the bad news -- the world recovery, which was weak in the first place, is in danger of stalling. The epicenter of...

What a difference a year makes ...

We started 2011 in recovery mode, admittedly weak and unbalanced, but nevertheless there was hope. The issues appeared more tractable: how to deal with excessive housing debt in the United States, how to deal with adjustment in countries at the periphery of the...

The global economy has entered a dangerous new phase. The recovery has weakened considerably, and downside risks have increased sharply. Strong policies are urgently needed to improve the outlook and reduce risks.
Growth, which had been strong in 2010, decreased in 2011. We had forecast some slowdown, due...

Last week I traveled to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil to participate in a conference on managing capital flows. Organized jointly by the Brazilian authorities and the IMF, the conference brought together experts from both the demand and supply sides of the issue, including many with a wealth...

The world economic recovery is gaining strength, but it remains unbalanced.

Three numbers tell the story. We expect the world economy to grow at about 4.5 percent a year in both 2011 and 2012, but with advanced economies growing at only 2.5 percent, while emerging and developing economies...

The global economic crisis taught us to question our most cherished beliefs about the way we conduct macroeconomic policy. Earlier I had put forward some ideas to help guide conversations as we reexamine these beliefs. I was heartened by the wide online debate and the excellent discussions at...

Before the global economic crisis, mainstream macroeconomists had largely converged on a framework for the conduct of macroeconomic policy. The framework was elegant, and conceptually simple. Caricaturing just a bit, it went like this:

• The essential goal of monetary policy was low and stable inflation. The best way to achieve...

The world economic recovery continues. But it remains a two-speed recovery: slow in advanced countries, and much faster in emerging and developing economies. As a result, tensions and risks are emerging, which require strong policy responses.

The outlook

For some time, global activity was led by fiscal stimulus and the...

The crisis has forced economists and policy makers to go back to their drawing boards. Where did they go wrong, and what implications does the crisis have for both macroeconomic theory and macroeconomic policy making?

This was the topic of this year's IMF Jacques Polak Research Conference. The...

How can governments have their cake and eat it too? How can fiscal policy provide sufficient support to economic activity, and reassure markets that fiscal solvency is not at risk? The poor state of fiscal accounts of most advanced countries calls for austere fiscal policies, before the confidence crisis that...

Achieving a "strong, balanced, and sustained world recovery"--to quote from the goal set in Pittsburgh by the G-20--was never going to be easy. It requires much more than just going back to business as usual. It requires two fundamental and complex economic rebalancing acts.

First, internal rebalancing. When...

The Group of Twenty industrialized and emerging market economies (G-20) has broken new ground over the past year or two. It has embraced the type of collaborative approach to policy design and review that is well suited to today's interdependent world, where policies in one country can often have far-reaching...

The macroeconomic forecasts in the IMF's latest World Economic Outlook update reflect two opposing forces. Looking back, say over the first half of the year, numbers about economic activity have come in strong, indeed somewhat stronger than we had forecast. These would give reasons to be more optimistic...

Olivier Blanchard and Carlo Cottarelli are economists at the International Monetary Fund

Advanced economies are facing the difficult challenge of implementing fiscal adjustment strategies without undermining a still fragile economic recovery. Fiscal adjustment is key to high private investment and long-term growth. It may also be key, at least in...

Let me begin with some good news. The global recovery has evolved better than expected. We at the IMF now forecast global growth to reach 4.2% in 2010, an upward revision of 0.3% from our January forecast, and 4.3% in 2011. Alongside growth, global trade has also...