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What Are the Main Characteristics of ‘Emerging Markets’? Essay

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What are the main characteristics of ‘emerging markets’?

Introduction
During the changing of world economy, it is increasingly common to hear the term ‘emerging markets’ and from news and report. In the mid-1980s, the term ‘emerging markets’ was created by the World Bank, and has significant influence on the global business world nowadays (Gwynne, Klak and Shaw 2003). To raise investor’s attention to those developing countries, there are numerous characteristics springing up which are given by researches and economists. However, some of those characteristics are contradictory and it is difficult to give a real definition. This essay discusses the main characteristics of ‘emerging markets’ as defined by the World Bank and economists. …show more content…

Kvint (2008) indicates that some statistics of reports on emerging market are contradictory, and this inconsistent situation even can be seen from IMF’s reports. For instance, some emerging countries like China and India are classified as emerging markets and are included in the category of developing countries. On the other hand, many of the sub-Saharan countries as emerging markets are definitely still undeveloped. Kvint (2008) suggests that the main and most important characteristic of all emerging market countries is that they are at some stage during the processes of economic maturation and development of free markets. An attractive environment for foreign investors and global trading has been created based on this characteristic. He suggests the main characteristics in his study: an emerging market country can be defined as a society transitioning from a dictatorship to a free market-oriented economy, with increasing economic freedom, gradual integration within the global marketplace, an expanding middle class, improving standards of living and social stability and tolerance, as well as an increase in cooperation with multilateral institutions (Kvint 2008, online).
Results of his study revealed that 81 countries were selected from the 192 country-members of the U.N. and categorized as emerging markets. Those emerging countries ‘account for nearly half of the gross world product, and attracted about $600 billion of foreign

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