The Global Economy Faces Headwinds from Water, Wage and Population Issues, says a Panel at Quinnipiac University's G.A.M.E. V Forum in New York

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Mar 20, 2015, 11:30 ET

NEW YORK, March 20, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Although they were generally positive, the "Global Economy" keynote panelists at Quinnipiac University's fifth annual Global Asset Management Education (G.A.M.E.) Forum in Manhattan on Thursday identified some causes for concern, especially wages, water and population.

Emanuella Enenajor, senior Canada and U.S. economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Research, identified the most significant damper on the economy as disinflation, a slowing in the rate of price inflation. But she also offered caveats about wages, technology and demographics. Technology can be disruptive to labor markets by displacing workers, she said. And it can also affect oil prices by adding efficiency into the system and suppressing energy demand.

World population trends, she added, are mostly downward, with the United Nations projecting Europe declining after 2020, and the world after 2050. "It's a key theme for questions about economic growth," she said.

Douglas Coté, CFA, chief market strategist and senior portfolio manager at Voya Investment Management, noted "tectonic shifts" in the global economy, including a not widely recognized but confidence building doubling of worldwide GDP from $37 trillion to $77 trillion between 2003 and today. He also downplayed the slowing of China's economy. "It's down to seven percent annual growth, big deal," he said. "China has a $10 trillion economy."

"There's so much fear for the wrong reasons," Coté said, acknowledging strong economic growth in many emerging nations, in part because of younger workforces without much debt. But he did identify a very real concern about economies being affected by water availability and stresses, in the Southwest and California and also in many countries around the world. "Less than one percent of our fresh water is available for human uses, and we're not paying attention to this scarce resource," he said.

Stability is the key, said Robert Johnson, CFA, director of economic analysis at Morningstar, Inc. He compared the economy to an ocean liner, hard to turn around perhaps but moving remarkably steadily forward since 2010.

In the U.S., Johnson pointed to both the aerospace industry, with Boeing a standout, and the auto industry, which has made a remarkable recovery from government bailouts, as reasons for strong economic performance.

The strong dollar could affect corporate profits, Johnson said, and real wages aren't growing very much. "But the wage situation is not as bad as people think it is," he said.

Johnson added that the U.S. is less dependent on exports than many other countries, especially China, and thus is less affected by volatility in the markets of emerging nations.

The G.A.M.E. V Forum, founded by Quinnipiac School of Business Finance Professor David Sauer, attracted more than 1,200 student participants from 140 colleges, 40 countries and 39 states to hear 100 speakers over two and a half days.

Quinnipiac is a private, coeducational, nonsectarian institution located 90 minutes north of New York City and two hours from Boston. The university enrolls 6,500 full-time undergraduate and 2,500 graduate students in 58 undergraduate and more than 20 graduate programs of study in its School of Business and Engineering, School of Communications, School of Education, School of Health Sciences, School of Law, Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine, School of Nursing and College of Arts and Sciences.