Giving Compass' Take:

• This Brookings post explores several questions about the global economy that need to be answered in order to promote growth and prosperity to everyone.

• Among the most vexing issues concern productivity and measurement. How will we be able to define progress if we don't have the right data in place?

• Here's an exploration of how global poverty is declining, but not fast enough.

The global economy continues to baffle economists who generate clever answers to puzzles but not always in convincing fashion. This is not new — Maurice Obstfeld and Ken Rogoff discussed six major puzzles in international macroeconomics almost two decades ago. Here are five issues where I feel the need to take a view in 2019 because the implications are so large. But these are also areas where I have limited conviction either through my own work or through my reading of the literature.

  1. Why is so little capital flowing to emerging and developing countries?
  2. What is going on with global productivity growth?
  3. Why is it so hard to fix externalities?
  4. What constitutes progress in the world?
  5. Why don’t we spend much more on nutrition and education?

Read the full article about 5 puzzles in the international economy by Homi Kharas at Brookings.