As we enter 2023, high levels of uncertainty remain about the world’s economic outlook. There are encouraging signs coming out of the United States, higher growth than expected in the last quarter of 2022, and it seems that inflation is finally receding. The lifting of COVID-19 restrictions in China are encouraging, and it could mean a better economic performance than expected in the year ahead. On the other hand, in other parts of the world growth has lost momentum, inflation is persistently high, central banks continue tightening financial conditions, global debt is high, and energy prices remain high as the war in Ukraine continues to unfold.
The Georgetown Americas Institute and the Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy hosted a conversation with Nathan Sheets, global chief economist at Citigroup, for a conversation to decipher where the world economy might be heading in the years ahead. Alejandro Werner, director of the Georgetown Americas Institute, will moderate the discussion.
Read the event summary here.
Featuring
Nathan Sheets is the global chief economist at Citigroup. Sheets has also served as the chief economist and head of global macroeconomics research at PGIM Fixed Income for four years. Before that, Sheets served as undersecretary for international affairs in the U.S. Treasury under President Barack Obama. He has served at the Federal Reserve Board (the Fed) in Washington, DC, for 18 years. During his tenure, he served in a variety of roles, including director of the division of International Finance; among his most notable accomplishments, Sheets served as the Fed chairman’s international adviser at the onset of the European fiscal crisis in the spring of 2010. He was also a key force behind the Federal Reserve Board’s global emergency lending program during the 2008 global financial crisis. While on leave from the Fed, he worked at the International Monetary Fund as senior advisor to the U.S. executive director from 2006 to 2007. Sheets earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Brigham Young University and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Alejandro Werner (moderator) is the founding director of the Georgetown Americas Institute and a non-resident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute. He recently completed almost nine years as director of the Western Hemisphere Department at the International Monetary Fund. Prior to that appointment, he was undersecretary of finance and public credit in Mexico’s Finance Ministry and held several positions in that ministry and the Central Bank. He also taught at leading universities in Mexico, Spain, and the United States. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a B.A. in economics from ITAM.