Trade and development report, 2016 – Structural transformation for inclusive and sustained growth published by UNCTAD (2016).
“In 1997, the Trade and Development Report argued that a return to faster growth and full employment in developed economies was a prerequisite for tackling the problem of rising inequality, and warned that failure to achieve this could provoke a “backlash against globalization, which might put the gains of global economic integration at risk”.
What happened next in the developed economies was a short boom-bust cycle linked to the dot-com bubble, followed by a period of steady growth and slowly falling unemployment. This was backed by an easy monetary policy in the United States that shored up investor confidence, triggered a surge of international capital flows and boosted global trade. Economists suggested that the world had entered a period of “great moderation”. Some proceeded to explain how hyperefficient, self-regulating markets, under the watchful eye of astute central bankers, had finally overcome the challenge of what then Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan called “risk transfer and financial stability”…”
