Scanning The Future: A Long-Term Scenario Study Of The World Economy, 1990-2015

The long-established and respected Central Planning Bureau of The Netherlands presents its most ambitious study of the future of the world economy. Not surprisingly skill and caution keep the authors from committing themselves to a single forecast, but there are many interesting hypotheses and suggestions about the shaping of national policies. There are some "pervasive developments" that, while hardly novel, are noteworthy because they turn up in almost all scenarios. Among them are "the further rise of East Asia, the long period of time needed to reconstruct east European economies, the spread of environmental problems and the risk of the emergence of antagonistic trading blocs."