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The economic recovery from the global financial and economic crisis that broke out in 2008 has been unusually weak. Global growth has consistently been slower than the average pace during the dozen or so years before the global financial crisis. The failure to achieve a stronger cyclical upswing has had very real costs in terms of foregone employment, stagnant living standards in advanced economies, less vigorous development in some emerging economies, and rising inequality nearly everywhere.
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Global growth is projected to strengthen in the course of 2015 and 2016, but will remain modest relative to the pre-crisis period and its global distribution will change from that in recent years. The acceleration is underpinned by very supportive monetary conditions, a slower pace of fiscal consolidation, financial repair and lower oil prices. Investment, a crucial component to the outlook, has yet to take off. The appreciation of the US dollar against most currencies has led to a significant realignment in exchange rates since mid-2014. The ensuing relative price effects are shifting global demand more toward Europe, Japan and some emerging market economies (EMEs). Growth in EMEs is slowing due to specific factors in China, Brazil and Russia and it could continue to be weak in the absence of structural reforms to undo bottlenecks.
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Total OECD real investment, and in particular housing investment, dropped precipitously at the peak of the crisis and its recovery has been sluggish. Weak investment has depressed productivity growth and will, if it persists, entrench low equilibrium growth and poor job prospects in the short and longer term.
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This annex contains data on key economic series which provide a background to the recent economic developments in the OECD area described in the main body of this report. Data for 2015 to 2016 are OECD estimates and projections. The data in some of the tables have been adjusted to conform to internationally agreed concepts and definitions in order to make them more comparable across countries, as well as consistent with historical data shown in other OECD publications. Regional aggregates are based on weights that change each period, with the weights depending on the series considered. For details on aggregation, see OECD Economic Outlook Sources and Methods.