Escaping the Growth Curse

Some Final Thoughts

Since we began the research leading to this book, the confluence of a number of unanticipated events have made the world a much more fragile place: The COVID-19 pandemic had a devastating effect not only on people’s physical and mental health, but it ushered in the largest global economic crisis in living memory and some of the highest levels of public and private debt since the end of World War II. And in another first, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 marked the first major war on European soil in over 70 years. This led to global food supply disruption (Ukraine is the world’s largest supplier of sunflower oil and, along with Russia, one of the biggest grain exporters), and it deepened the energy crisis that had ...