Collapse and revival: Understanding global recessions and recoveries

The world is still recovering from the most recent global recession associated with the 2008-2009 financial crisis, and the possibility of another downturn persists as the global economy struggles to regain lost ground. But, what is a global recession? What do we mean by a global recovery? What really happens during these episodes? As the debates about the recent global recession and the subsequent recovery have clearly shown, our understanding of these questions has been very limited.

On October 20, Brookings and the IMF co-hosted a panel discussion with M. Ayhan Kose (director of the World Bank Group’s Development Prospects Group) and Marco E. Terrones (deputy division chief in the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund), authors of a new multimedia book “Collapse and Revival: Understanding Global Recessions and Recoveries.” During the conversation, the authors drew on their book to track the global business cycle through the destruction of a global recession to the revival of recovery by examining four major episodes in the past half century. The panel put the latest global recession and ongoing recovery in perspective and analyzed the interactions between global and national growth in light of recent developments.