Less than a year after the fi rst Nordic Globalization Barometer has been launched, the state of the world economy has changed dramatically. A deep fi nancial crisis is taking its toll on investors, borrowers, and the fi nancial institutions that serve them. A deep economic crisis is threatening to bring the global economy close to stagnation for the fi rst time in the modern era.

And while some past economic downturns and fi nancial collapses did have an international dimension, this one is arguably the fi rst true global crisis, affecting pretty much all economies around the globe. This raises many long-term questions about globalization, about the functioning of markets, and about the lessons the Nordic countries should draw from this crisis. The Nordic Globalization Barometer makes a contribution to those questions that are related to the supply side of the economy, i.e. the factors that infl uence an economy’s productive capacity in the medium term. The Barometer provides data to inform the decisions that Nordic leaders are facing in this respect.