There are good reasons to believe that there will be no return to the pre-QE configuration of balance sheets.

Private balance sheets have risen relative to GDP in advanced economies in the last decades, in tandem with a trend of decline in long-term real interest rates. Asset-driven macroeconomic cycles, along with a structural trend of rising influence of finance on income growth and distribution, have become part of the landscape. Underlying secular trends of stagnation may also be suggested, making the macroeconomic dynamics dependent on the balance sheet economy getting bigger and bigger.

Cross-border technological diffusion has contributed to rising domestic productivity levels in advanced and emerging economies and facilitated a partial reshaping of the global innovation landscape. However, there are local requisites to escalate the ladder of innovation capabilities.

The global trend towards increasing globalization since the 1990s seems to have had two different distributional consequences: income inequality between countries has declined, while economic inequality within countries has increased. However, technological progress has made the biggest contribution to rising income inequality over the past two decades. Domestic policies – fiscal policies, social protection - are the locus where inequality is to be tackled.

We point out two major challenges in the rebalancing. First, the transition toward a less investment- and export-dependent growth model has been taking place from a starting point of exceptionally low consumption-to-GDP ratios. Besides high profit-to-wages ratios, low levels of public social protection and spending lead to high household savings. An additional challenge comes from the lack of progress in rebalancing between private- and state-owned enterprises, something that is taking a toll on productivity.

In the 1990s and 2000s, foreign trade expanded, and world poverty diminished. Such trade globalization process stabilized in the 2010s and tends to be partially reversed by the new wave of technological changes.

The pandemic will leave scars and countries will not return to where they were. There will be a need for retraining and job reallocation for part of the populations of all countries. The role of public policies will be central in the post-COVID-19 world, both in strengthening social protection—including through unemployment insurance and income transfer programs—and in the requalification of workers.