In this research, we borrow a fundamental tool from the corporate world—the balance sheet—to take stock of the underlying health and resilience of the global economy. This view complements more usual approaches based on GDP or other economic flows. It provides an in-depth look at the state of the global economy after two decades of turbulence, notably the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath, more than a decade of ultra-low interest rates and heavy central bank intervention, and, most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic. We focus on ten countries that together account for about 60 percent of global GDP: Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States (see Box E1, “Our research approach, key concepts, data sources, and limitations”).