Davide Furceri

Ksenia Koloskova

Gustavo Adler

Mr.Romain A Duval

Marcos Poplawski-Ribeiro

Sinem Kiliç Çelik

Productivity growth—the key driver of living standards—fell sharply following the global financial crisis and has remained sluggish since, adding to a slowdown already in train before. Building on new research, this note finds that the productivity slowdown reflects both crisis legacies and structural headwinds. In advanced economies, the global financial crisis has led to “productivity hysteresis”—persistent productivity losses from a seemingly temporary shock. Behind this are balance sheet vulnerabilities, protracted weak demand and elevated uncertainty, which jointly triggered an adverse feedback loop of weak investment, weak productivity and bleak income prospects. Structural headwinds—already blowing before the crisis—include a waning ICT boom and slowing technology diffusion, partly reflecting an aging workforce, slowing global trade and weaker human capital accumulation. Reviving productivity growth requires addressing remaining crisis legacies in the short run while pressing ahead with structural reforms to tackle longer-term headwinds.

Global Productivity

Gone with the Headwinds

Carlos Caceres

Ms.Darlena Tartari Schwegler

This paper analyses inflation dynamics in the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC) using a constructed dataset for country-specific commodity price indices and panel cointegrated vector autoregressive (VAR) models. Imported commodity price shocks are significant in explaining inflation in the region. Governments are another driving force of inflation dynamics mainly through controlled prices and the role of capital expenditure in domestic activity. In most CEMAC countries, the largest effect of global food and fuel prices occurs after four or five quarters in noncore inflation and then decays substantially over time. Second-round effects are significant only in Cameroon and to a lesser extent in the Republic of Congo.

Inflation Dynamics in the CEMAC Region

Marcos Poplawski-Ribeiro

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