Prospects for the World Economy

Abstract:

This paper explores four factors which we hardly notice from year to year, but which accumulate relentlessly over time, such that by 2015 they will have profoundly transformed the world as we now know it. The four factors are population growth, growth in per capita income, increasing international mobility among national firms and individuals, both made possible and driven by technological changes in transportation and communication, and the aging of existing political leaders (as well as everyone else).