The World in 2050: Striving for a just, prosperous and harmonious global community

This book takes a long-term perspective of economic and social outlook of the world to 2050. Its main focus is on the emerging and developing economies of today. But given the increasing interconnectedness of our world, it inevitably considers the likely evolution of the world economy as a whole. Given its long-term perspective, the book focuses on cross-cutting, intergenerational issues that often get overshadowed by the short-term crises and political preoccupations of the day.

The book is a joint effort of a multidisciplinary, multicultural team of 26 authors who were born in twelve different countries on five continents. They all have lifelong experiences in economic and social development. While building on this experience, the book takes an analytically rigorous and, hopefully, dispassionate approach.

Before looking forward to 2050, the book first looks back at key economic and social developments during the past half century. At the same time, given the global economic turbulence since 2007, the still sluggish growth in much of Europe and Japan, a possible erosion in the global productivity growth rate, and, in the last two to three years, the sharp slow down in many large emerging economies, questions have arisen as to whether the era of rapid convergence is over, and whether from now on more and more emerging market economies are destined to get mired in the middle income trap. Or, can the emerging economies once again resume their march towards ever increasing living standards through technological development and productivity gains? While the book attempts to address this topical question by looking at economic fundamentals, its objectives are much broader and its policy agenda much more far-reaching. Consequently, much of the book concentrates on the discussion of the cross-cutting and intergenerational issues that will, in the view of the authors, determine as to what kind of world our future generations will inherit.

The World in 2050 was released in Paris in April 2016. It was published by Oxford University Press and is available on Amazon.