World Economy Review - August 2018
Dow Jones Index
Britain`s economy will shrink if it leaves the European Union without a Brexit deal and it will suffer some damage whatever terms it agrees, the International Monetary Fund said, challenging the promises of some Brexit supporters.
The Fund predicted Britain`s economy would grow by about 1.5 percent a year in 2018 and 2019 - lagging behind Germany and France - if a broad Brexit agreement was struck.
“I`m a desperate optimist, and I very much hope and pray that there will be a deal between the European Union and the UK,” IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said.
But failure to get a deal would lead to a contraction, she said.
“Let me be clear, compared with today`s smooth single market, all the likely Brexit scenarios will have costs for the economy and to a lesser extent as well for the EU,” Lagarde said as the IMF presented its annual report on Britain`s economy.
“The larger the impediments to trade in the new relationship, the costlier it will be. This should be fairly obvious, but it seems that sometimes it is not.”
Britain is due to leave the EU in little more than six months` time but London and Brussels have yet to strike a deal to secure a transition period.
Prime Minister Theresa May has struggled to bridge a deep divide within her Conservative Party about how close a relationship Britain should have with the EU.
She is hoping to make progress toward a deal when she meets fellow EU leaders this week.
British finance minister Philip Hammond, speaking alongside Lagarde, said the government had ...
The World Economy
World GDP Growth, %
The world economy can be evaluated in various ways, depending on the model used, and this valuation can then be represented in various ways (for example, in 2006 US dollars). It is inseparable from the geography and ecology of Earth, and is therefore somewhat of a misnomer, since, while definitions and representations of the "world economy" vary widely, they must at a minimum exclude any consideration of resources or value based outside of the Earth.
For example, while attempts could be made to calculate the value of currently unexploited mining opportunities in unclaimed territory in Antarctica, the same opportunities on Mars would not be considered a part of the world economy - even if currently exploited in some way - and could be considered of latent value only in the same way as uncreated intellectual property, such as a previously unconceived invention. Beyond the minimum standard of concerning value in production, use, and exchange on the planet Earth, definitions, representations, models, and valuations of the world economy vary widely.
It is common to limit questions of the world economy exclusively to Human economic activity, and the world economy is typically judged in monetary terms, even in cases in which there is no efficient market to help valuate certain goods or services, or in cases in which a lack of independent research or government cooperation makes establishing figures difficult. Typical examples are illegal drugs and prostitution, which by any standard are a part of the world economy, but for which there is by definition no legal market of any kind.