World economic upswing continues

The world economy is currently expanding strongly with upward momentum in almost every major economy. Global activity is set to expand by 3.8 percent, 0.1 percentage point above our September forecast and the strongest figure since 2011. We have also slightly revised up, to 3.9 percent, our forecast for 2018 and expect growth of 3.6 percent in 2019. Inflation is projected to accelerate only gradually – modest levels of core inflation are largely due to structural factors and consistent with the assessment of continuously shrinking spare capacities. Risks for the global outlook stem from the upcoming normalization of monetary policies, which could trigger adjustments in risk attitudes in financial markets, eventually resulting in sharp corrections of asset prices and exchange rates or capital flow reversals.