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Assessing accurately global economic conditions is a great challenge for economists. The International Monetary Fund proposes within its periodic World Economic Outlook report a measure of the global GDP annual growth, that is generally considered as the benchmark nowcast by macroeconomists. In this paper, we put forward an alternative approach to provide monthly nowcasts of the annual global growth rate. Our approach builds on a Factor‐Augmented MIxed DAta Sampling (FA‐MIDAS) model that enables: (i) to account for a large monthly database including various countries and sectors of the global economy and (ii) to nowcast a low‐frequency macroeconomic variable using higher frequency information. Pseudo‐real‐time results over the period 2010–16 show that this approach provides reliable and timely nowcasts of the world GDP annual growth on a monthly basis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to identify the main causes of bilateral trade flows in OECD countries. The specific features of the study include the explicit introduction of R&D and FDI as the two important explanatory variables, conduct of unit root tests in the panel data framework and careful consideration of endogeneity. The main findings are that the levels and similarities of market size, domestic R&D stock and inward FDI stock are positively related to bilateral trade, while the distance, measured by both geographical distance and relative factor endowment, between trade partner countries has a negative impact. These findings lend support to new trade, FDI and new growth theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the need for well-based information about the comparative size of different national economies to understand the events and relationships in the world economy. It mentions the derivation from systematic cross-country comparisons of the prices of the goods and services that enter into gross domestic product (GDP). The concept of a country's systemic relevance in the global economy is also tackled.

In contrast to rapid economic growth in the twentieth century, Korea suffered a long economic decline in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with the failure accelerating from 1850 to 1890. According to 36 different harvest records, rice productivity continuously declined from the early eighteenth to the late nineteenth centuries due to deforestation and increase in natural disasters. Contraction of rural markets after the interruption of trade with Japan also contributed to the decrease in rice production. The third reason for the nineteenth-century crisis was the dissolution of the government-led grain storage and redistribution system. Finally, the ultimate culprit for the crisis could be found in Confucianism with which the Joseon Dynasty was unable to properly understand and respond to the crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current debate over China's rise and the future of international primacy is polarized between two prevalent views: one foresees China becoming the world's largest economy and taking over the position of international primacy from the United States, whereas the other believes that the Chinese economy will falter as a result of structural imbalances and China will not become a superpower. Both predictions miss the mark. This study argues that notwithstanding the political will to rebalance the economy, China will continue to follow an investment-intensive growth path, and despite the structural imbalances, this path will still be able to lead to Chinese economic primacy. But sheer economic size is not a good indicator of hard power. Using an organic combination of wealth and productivity as an indicator of hard power, the article shows how close the power competition between China and the United States will likely be and that Beijing may not be able to surpass Washington as a superpower. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trade openness, popularly measured as ( X + M)/ GDP in the hundreds of studies published to date, consistently considers the world's biggest trading countries such as the USA, the UK, Japan and Germany to be closed economies, irrespective of the data set used. This study suggests a composite trade share measure that more completely reflects reality by combining two important dimensions of trade openness: trade share and the relative importance of a country's trade level to total world trade. Robustness tests support the new proposed measure in lieu of the conventional measure of openness and suggest that the latter may not only be incomplete but may also overstate the impact of trade on such things as income and the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the economic developments of European Union (EU) member states outside the euro area in 2006. The real world trade growth of member states was 9 percent and world real gross domestic product (GDP) grew an estimated 5.1 percent. The world economy remained strong despite high oil prices. The U.S. economy which is one of the main drivers of the world economy remained strong, although growth slowed towards the end of 2006 as the housing market cooled along with consumer spending.

With the increasing globalization of the world economy, there has been a growing interest in the potential contributions of good governance to accelerating the rate of economic and social development in the developing countries, and enhance their smooth integration into the emerging global economy. Simultaneously, developed economies are experiencing an increasing proportion in the contribution of knowledge, information, and telecommunication sectors to their overall gross domestic product. This is placing increased focus on the role and contribution of national information infrastructure to economic productivity, and in extension, to the economic and social development of nations. In this article, the authors explore the link between information and communication technologies (ICTs), governance, and social economic development in the developing countries. They empirically conclude that contributions of ICTs to social–economic development are influenced by sociopolitical governance—leading to national development through more prudent and egalitarian application and use of the ICTs' portfolio. The contingent role of governance on ICTs and national development paves the path towards recognizing the importance of sociopolitical moderators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]