What are the global economic trends for 2014?

The post in pdf format is here What are the global economic trends for 2014?

Four major factors could be said to sum up the global macroeconomic environment at the start of this year:

• The global economy is experiencing a period of synchronized recovery driven by the US, where growth has been trending upwards since the summer. Europe is no longer hampering global growth, as it did from spring 2011. Japan is making a bigger contribution to global activity, thanks to the strategy pursued over the last year by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. This trend reflects the predominance of industrialized countries during this recovery phase. The situation for emerging countries is more complex. China no longer holds the position of leader it had until very recently. The refocusing of its growth strategy onto domestic demand has affected numerous emerging countries, which must establish more autonomous sources of growth. These countries will bounce back, but investors will discriminate between these countries more than in the past.

What kind of dynamics for Europe and for Euro Area countries?

Growth prospects for 2014 are more positive for the Euro zone. GDP should increase by about 1%.
After 2 years of low or negative growth, this is a welcome change. This could stop the long under-performance seen since 2007 in most Euro Area countries.
However, even if 2014 brings color back to Europe, the road is still very long before considering that a new equilibrium has been reached. Especially since the situations are very heterogeneous within the Euro area. Countries have very different profiles of activity and very different dynamics

To illustrate this point I have taken the GDP per capita (at constant prices) for the Euro Area, for Germany, for France, for Italy, for Spain, for Ireland, for Portugal and for the United Kingdom. The series used are those of the AMECO database of the European Commission (see here).