Davos World Economic Forum

How do you start a Davos World Economic Forum research paper? Our expert writers suggest like this:

This week most of the world's leading business leaders, economists and governmental representatives met in Davos, Switzerland for the annual Davos World Economic Forum. The outlook at this year's meeting looks more grim than usual. With the world just beginning to recover from the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression, most people see more hard times ahead. Many governments are now carrying large debt loads as the assumed the debts of the profligate banks in their respective countries. The advanced countries are seeing stubbornly high employment and weak demand for services. The emerging markets such as China and India have fared better than most as they took aggressive steps to encourage domestic spending or deficit financed government spending projects to make up for the shortfall.

Economists have many solutions to our current problem with the most prevalent being austerity measures. They advocate balancing budgets and reducing government spending as the road to recovery. This view is being taken to heart in Europe as countries like France, Greece, Ireland and the UK make harsh cuts in government services. Unfortunately for these countries, the austerity measures will also further depress their economies and do less than they hope to bring down their debt burdens. We can see this already in UK which actually showed contraction in their economy in quarter 4 of 2010. In Ireland, the austerity measures have done nothing to boost confidence that Ireland will repay it's debts.

Other economists are still advocating for further government stimulus measures to increase demand. Some notable economists such as Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman have been very vocal in voicing these concerns. Their argument involved what Keynes said in the Great Depression, the paradox of thrift. With consumers also loaded down with debt and businesses unwilling to invest until demand returns, consumers are saving in order to pay down debts. The problem is this can be a reinforcing cycle creating deflation which actually makes the debt burden worse. They argue that in the absence of other methods of demand, the government must step in as the spender of last resort until consumers can return to driving the economy. As the economy grows, the debt shrinks in relation. We will see at next year's Davos World Economic forum who's predictions turned out to be more accurate.