Australia's leading independent economic and industry forecaster

A global shortage of semiconductors is the latest hiccup to disturb international supply-chains. In our view, though, the shortage is largely a product of strong demand, reflecting the buoyant state o...

Business sentiment has improved further over the past month, based on our latest quarterly survey of global risk perceptions. Upside hopes now rest as much on consumers’ willingness to run down saving...

We expect capital expenditure (capex) to come back strongly in 2021, supported by a dynamic rise in capital goods orders. Whether it’s enough for a more permanent increase in investment (and productiv...

World goods trade is staging an impressive recovery. It has now returned to its pre-pandemic trend, and our forecasts see it expanding by 10.5% this year after dropping 6.1% in 2020. Some bilateral tr...

Rising global Covid infections remain a key focus, but the recent surge is not automatically grounds for us to slash our near-term forecasts. Indeed, the strength of the initial business and consumer...

According to our pandemic-impact scorecard, EMs on average have been most afflicted, followed by frontier markets, with advanced economies suffering the least. But averages mask huge differences acros...

Rising raw materials prices, supply-chain disruptions, and surging shipping costs are raising expenses for producers, boosting near-term global inflationary pressures. We believe this burst of produce...

Global trade is recovering so strongly that infrastructure seems unable to support it. As shipping costs reach new highs, reports of delays still aren’t subsiding. Nevertheless, most countries manage...

In an unwelcome development, global Covid case numbers are rising sharply again. Although this adds downside risk to our economic outlook, we aren’t downgrading our GDP growth forecasts for this and l...

With commodity prices regaining pandemic-related losses, and some reaching highs last seen a decade ago, many observers think this is the start of a new commodity supercycle. We disagree.The recent pr...