LESSONS OF THE ASIA CRISIS

The crisis caught most economic forecasters offguard. Even today, no one can predict how long the crisis will last or how deep it will be. But. in the midst of this great uncertainty, it is important for us to have a sense of where the world economy is going, what has brought us to this juncture, and what we can do to improve our current outlook and to make another such global calamity less likely. A new World Bank report tries to provide this information. Global Economic Prospects and the Developing Countries 1998/99 examines the anatomy of the Asia crisis and assesses both the short and long-term outlooks for the world economy in its wake. As the report makes clear, there is not unanimity on many of the key issues surrounding the crisis. But it is another step toward understanding the nature of the crisis, analysing the world's response, and providing some guidance on how we can make crises less frequent in the future.