World Economic Outlook: A survey by the staff of the International Monetary Fund: October 1997

This paper presents an outlook for the world economy for 1997–98. With world output expected to expand by some 4¼ percent in both 1997 and 1998, the strongest pace in a decade, the global economy is enjoying the fourth episode of relatively rapid growth since the early 1970s. The expansion is underpinned by continued solid growth with low inflation in the United States and the United Kingdom; a strengthening recovery in Canada; a broadening of recovery across continental western Europe, notwithstanding persistent weakness in domestic demand in some of the largest countries.