Last year, monetary policy returned to an easing mode, in response to a marked slowdown in global growth, and the IMF estimates that the monetary easing added 0.5% to world growth in 2019.

Haruhiko Kurodaand and Mario Draghi may be among the few economists who still think negative interest rates are a good idea.

AMERICANS Thomas Sargent and Christopher Sims shared the 2011 Nobel Prize for Economics yesterday for providing ways to understand the impacts of policy changes or shocks like surging oil prices on output, inflation or employment.