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| Table 1 |
Dukascopy, a Swiss Forex Bank, runs a monthly Survey on Global and Regional Economic Developments by asking a panel of international “experts” and researchers (including myself) based in several Universities around the world (*), how they see developments in EU, US&Canada and Asia. Numbers below 0.5 mean negative outlooks (0 being the worse) and above 0.5 mean poitive outlooks (1 being the best).
Relatively to the November Poll, the overall index on the current outlook improved slightly (from .38 to .43), thanks to more optimistic assesments
of the US , with EU and Asia almost unchanged.
The panel see the global economy staying in the current “moderately negative” situation (Table 1) for at least 6 months, and to improving gradually over the next 3 years. Yet things are quite different across different areas. The dim situation in EU is perceived to worsen in the next 6 months and to remain quite (but not as) bad over the next 3 years. The forecasts’ standard deviation is the lowest for EU, indicating relatively little disagreemnt over this scenario. Asia is doing fine according to experts.
There are two interesting features in the Polls results. The first is that the experts’ forecasts qualitatively agree with the IMF scenario presented in the latest World Economic Outlook. The second is that the forecasts seem to reflect a “pessimistic bias” to to “foreign (i.e. non local) experts” (see Table 2). It turns out that Europeanss are consididerably less bearish on the EU economy than non Europeans, and a similarly Americans more bullish than non Americans on the Noth American economy).
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| Table 2 |
Let’s hope that we locals know better..
(*) Australian National University, Cornell University, Deakin University, Dublin City University, Edinburgh Napier University, Hong Kong Shue Yan University, Manchester Business School, Monash University, Nanjing University, Natioonal University of Singapore, New York University, Saint Louis University, Santa Clara University, Singapore Management University, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, University of Colorado, University of Western Ontario, University of Connecticut, University of Pennsylvania, University of Arizona, University of Minnesota, University of Oregon, University of Groningen, University of Mannheim, University of Lugano, University of Bologna, University of New South Wales, University of Sydney, University of London, Uppsala University.