Business Cycles In Brics

This volume focuses on the analysis and measurement of business cycles in Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS). Divided into five parts, it begins with an overview of the main concepts and problems involved in monitoring and forecasting business cycles. Then it highlights the role of BRICS in the global economy and explores the interrelatedness of business cycles within BRICS. In turn, part two provides studies on the historical development of business cycles in the individual BRICS countries and describes the driving forces behind those cycles. Parts three and four present national business tendency surveys and composite cyclical indices for real-time monitoring and forecasting of various BRICS economies, while the final part discusses how the lessons learned in the BRICS countries can be used for the analysis of business cycles and their socio-political consequences in other emerging countries.

This paper assesses the extent to which Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)’s business cycle is synchronized with that of the rest of the world (RoW). Findings suggest that SSA’s business cycle has not only moved in the same direction as that of the RoW, but has also gradually drifted away from the G7 in favour of the BRICs. Trade with the BRICs turns out to be the strongest driver of this shift. Much of this impact unfolds through aggregate demand impulse from trade. As fiscal policy stances in SSA and the BRICs are not synchronized, they have not caused cyclical output correlation between these two groups of countries. Also, financial openness, which is at a very early stage across most SSA countries, has acted as a neutral force.

This book offers a quantitative and qualitative look at the much-discussed BRICS—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—and explores how their economic ascent might cause global economic realignments in the 21st century. Providing a Chinese perspective on how the global realignment might impact strategic choices and a data-driven approach to the similarities and differences within the so-called BRICS group, this book will be of great interest to economists, international banking professionals, and political forecasters.

In 2008, it appeared that the BRIC nations’ economies would continue to provide growth opportunities for businesses of all kinds. After a decade of unprecedented growth, however, Brazil, Russia, India, and China have unexpectedly slowed. In this innovative book, expert contributors diagnose and examine the factors that might be responsible for the changing trends in the BRIC and other emerging market economies and that may determine the future course of these economies and their prospects for sustained growth. This volume offers valuable insights into a wide range of issues pertaining to emerging economies that demand the attention of researchers and practitioners. In particular, contributors explore topics such as the importance of innovation, internationalization trends of emerging market firms, sustainability and social issues, market liberalization and entrepreneurship, consumer behavior and customer relations. Rigorous scholarly research, including empirical work, and perspectives from emerging markets make this an essential resource for doctoral students, business academics and executives, and politicians and policy makers involved in developing nations and their economies.

This handbook presents a comprehensive and multi-faceted analysis of the BRICS countries and other emerging economies, exploring their economic, social, environmental, and governance dimensions and challenges.

This book is on globalization and sustainable growth in China. Thanks to the market-oriented policy reforms initiated in the late 1970s, China has achieved spectacular economic growth over the past several decades, and its economic structure has experienced great transformation. In the meantime, in the general context of globalization, the whole country has also gradually opened up to foreign trade and foreign direct investment, transforming itself from a virtually completely closed economy to a major trading nation and the largest developing-country destination for foreign direct investment in the world. In the first three chapters of this book, we investigate the potential and actual mechanisms and channels through which globalization, especially openness to foreign trade and foreign direct investment, affects industrial development and growth disparities in China. The current wave of globalization has encouraged economic growth in the world economy and affected all sides of international economic involvement. In the next four chapters of the book, we study China and the world economy. We first join the line of research on the trade frictions between China and the United States, including an analytical chapter on trade imbalance and protectionist policy, and an empirical chapter on business cycle synchronization between China and the US. A chapter on growth cycles in the BRICS is also included to explore growth and trade linkages among these five emerging market economies. A new “conventional wisdom” on globalization is that trade and financial openness do not lead to higher economic growth by themselves, in the absence of institutional reforms. Motivated by the Chinese experience, we develop an analytical framework in the last chapter to examine the case of growth targeting in China and draw policy implication for LDCs on how to achieve positive and sustainable economic growth. This book provides the readers with new facts and new findings that shed light on their understanding of globalization and sustainable growth in China.

This paper assesses the extent to which Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)’s business cycle is synchronized with that of the rest of the world (RoW). Findings suggest that SSA’s business cycle has not only moved in the same direction as that of the RoW, but has also gradually drifted away from the G7 in favour of the BRICs. Trade with the BRICs turns out to be the strongest driver of this shift. Much of this impact unfolds through aggregate demand impulse from trade. As fiscal policy stances in SSA and the BRICs are not synchronized, they have not caused cyclical output correlation between these two groups of countries. Also, financial openness, which is at a very early stage across most SSA countries, has acted as a neutral force.