Opinion

Davos was upbeat, but don’t count on a soft landing

China’s slowdown, lacklustre Europe and no US fiscal tightening in an election year means the risks to global growth are still on the downside.

Kenneth RogoffColumnist

Feb 12, 2024 – 10.23am

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A month into 2024, the consensus forecast for the global economy remains cautiously optimistic, with most central banks and analysts projecting either a soft landing or potentially no landing at all. Even my colleague Nouriel Roubini, famous for his bearish tilt, regards the worst-case scenarios as the least likely to materialise.

The CEOs and policymakers I spoke to during last month’s World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos echoed this sentiment. The fact that the global economy did not slip into recession last year, despite the sharp rise in interest rates, left many experts upbeat about the outlook for this year.

Kenneth Rogoff is a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund and professor of economics and public policy at Harvard University.