Emerging at last

摘要

In 1994 this newspaper launched a new emerging-market indicators page to mark "a fundamental and remarkably rapid change in the balance of the world economy". Emerging economies were then growing twice as fast as the rich ones, and their stockmarkets were surging. But the timing of the launch was awful. It came at the start of a dismal decade for emerging economies, with crises in Mexico at the end of 1994. Asia in 1997, Russia in 1998, Brazil in 1999, Turkey in 2000, Argentina in 2001 and Venezuela in 2002. By 2002 the msci emerging-market share-price index had lost almost 60% of its 1994 value. Last year it regained that peak. But is the current economic boom any more sustainable?