Analysis from the University of Surrey suggests that the economies of countries such as America, the United Kingdom and Germany should prepare for a long slow recovery with prolonged periods of instability.
Analysis from the University of Surrey suggests that the economies of countries such as America, the United Kingdom and Germany should prepare for a long slow recovery with prolonged periods of instability.
Rates of growth across member states of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have been in decline since the 1970s, a phenomenon known as ‘secular stagnation’. The average growth in gross domestic product (GDP) per capita fell from over 4 percent in the mid-1960s to little more than 1 percent in the pre-pandemic years. The International Monetary Fund expects global GDP to decline by 5 percent this year alone (2020) with a contraction of 3 percent likely even in the emerging and developing market economies.1
In a paper published by Nature, researchers from Surrey’s Centre for Understanding Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP) broke new research ground by applying critical slowing down (CSD) theory, typically used in physics and ecology, to analyse long-term trends in the global GDP datasets from as far back as the 1820s.2,3
CSD theory suggests that when a constrained, dynamic system is close to breaking point, its ability to recovery decreases. Fluctuations around the system’s equilibrium become deeper and more pronounced because its internal stabilisation forces have weakened.
Read more at University of Surrey
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