OECD Economics Department Working Papers

This paper was prepared in the OECD Economics Department as a contribution to the Organisation-wide study entitled, "Towards a New Global Age". It examines macro-structural economic developments in and between OECD and non-OECD economies, the economic linkages and a number of structural factors and policies which have influenced growth performance. It goes on to consider a number of alternative forward-looking macroeconomic scenarios to 2020 for the world economy based on different hypotheses about economic policies and other factors influencing factor productivity developments. A final section provides a model-based evaluation of the potential influence of some of the key factors underlying these scenarios, in particular the influence of demographic changes such as population ageing and alternative fiscal policies.