By Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund
Low growth, high inequality, and slow progress on structural reforms are among the key issues that G20 leaders will discuss at their meeting in Hangzhou, China, this weekend. This meeting comes at an important moment for the global economy. The political pendulum threatens to swing against economic openness, and without forceful policy actions, the world could suffer from disappointing growth for a long time.
2016 will be the fifth consecutive year with global GDP growth below its long-term average of 3.7 percent (1990-2007), and 2017 may well be the sixth (Chart 1). Not since the early 1990s - when ripple effects from economic transition caused growth to slow - has the world economy been so weak for such a long time. What has happened?
In advanced economies, real growth is running almost a full percentage point below the average of…