JACKSON HOLE, Wyoming - Record levels of government debt, geopolitical tensions that threaten to split the global trading system, and the likely persistence of weak productivity gains may saddle the world with a slow-growth future that stunts development in some countries even before it starts.
Gourinchas said it is possible that global growth settles into a trend of around 3% annually, a figure far below rates above 4% seen when rapid advances in China's economy drove global output higher and which some economists consider borderline recessionary in a world where quick gains should still be achievable in large, less-developed countries.
Economists and policymakers here appeared in rough consensus that two trends from before the pandemic, both with global-growth implications, had been intensified by the health crisis and other recent events. Globally the fallout could be severe if public borrowing steers capital from countries that still have growing populations and less developed economies, said Cornell University economics professor Eswar Prasad.
"In my view the strategies we are pursuing despite a lot of heated rhetoric implies neither more nor less trade," Bernstein said during one discussion. But World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said while the pandemic raised reasonable issues around global supply resilience, particularly for sensitive items like pharmaceuticals, the move to reorder global production patterns risked leaving growth opportunities on the table.