Global Journal of Emerging Market Economies

India and China are two Asian emerging economies with the unprecedented growth. In the context of slowdown in North since 2008, many have argued that the emerging economies can be drivers of growth of South. However, not much empirical evidence is available to support this argument. This article estimates the growth linkages between the South Asia and its economies, and the two Asian emerging economies in terms of cointegration and causation in their growth rates. Both short-term and long-term relationships are tested for the period 1970–2009. The tests for structural breaks are also undertaken. The results show that there is a long-term relationship as well as short-term relationship between China’s growth and growth South Asia (excluding India). In the post-structural break period, that is, post-1985, the relationship is found to be two way, with China also benefitting from growth of South Asia. India, on the other hand, seems to have limited integration with the region. The only relationship that is found between India’s growth and that of other countries’ growth in the region is with Bangladesh and Bhutan.

The effect of the global financial crisis on the international trade patterns of developed countries has been one of the main focuses of recent scholarship. However, world trade depends evermore on emerging markets increases every day. Therefore, it is important to study the level of the negative effect of the crisis on emerging economies and the level of their recovery potential. This paper empirically studies the effects of the financial crisis on trade elasticities of BRIICS (Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, China, and South Africa) countries and Turkey. The imperfect substitute model (Goldstein & Khan, 1985) for the export and import demand functions is used. Additionally, the extended model is estimated where commodity price index is employed. The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach to cointegration is applied to test the cointegration relationships between exports and imports and their determinants, and in order to estimate the export and import elasticities in the countries under examination. The empirical results provide enough evidence to conclude that changes in the exchange rate and in commodity prices did not play significant role in export and import demand functions before and after the global financial crisis. However, foreign and domestic incomes are found highly significant and elastic in export and import demand functions, respectively. It is found as well that the global financial crisis had increasing effect on export and import responsiveness to foreign and domestic incomes respectively, except for Turkey and Brazil in the export demand function and South Africa in the import demand function.

Many interdisciplinary studies of the 2007–2008 global financial crisis examine the causes of crisis, corporate governance and firm value, stock market efficiency, new firm registration, macroeconomic performance, and compare this crisis to previous crises. However, we do not find conceptual (empirical) studies that study foreign mergers or acquisitions with respect to the financial crisis. In this exploratory study, we perform an investigation using the UNCTAD’s dataset of worldwide cross-border mergers and acquisitions (CB-M&As). We select 26 countries and employ the adjusted event-study method to find significant difference between the means of pre-crisis period (2004–2006) and post-crisis period (2008–2010) for both sales and purchases in three variables, namely, number of deals, deal value, and average deal value. Our results show that the 2007–2008 global financial crisis has negatively affected both CB-M&A sale and purchase transactions all over the world from 2008 to 2009. We found, however, that after the crisis period, emerging market countries have taken advantage of the attractive asset prices in developed countries and increased their foreign acquisitions. Lastly, we offer “crisis-related CB-M&A propositions” that would facilitate future hypotheses testing, empirical studies, and policy-making research.

In 2012 the country’s leadership announced a vision that Kazakhstan would join the top 30 developed countries by 2050. This article reports on a study that assessed this vision and its feasibility; explored the current conditions in Kazakhstan, the international outlook, and the lessons from comparator countries; carried out in-depth analysis in seven priority areas, resulting in a set of short, medium, and long-term recommendations and an assessment of key challenges and trade-offs; and explored cross-cutting principles to guide policy making. The article closes with an assessment of challenges that faced the study team in its work.