Economic growth in emerging economies: what, who and why

ABSTRACT

This article proposes a general definition of emerging economies (EEs) and investigates the main determinants of their high rates of economic growth by extending the basic framework of neoclassical growth models to include various dimensions of economic development. According to the proposed definition, we find a list of 38 EEs for the period 2000–2014, whose emergence is proved to be strictly associated with the decline of the age dependency ratio, the increasing rates of investment growth and the improvements in human capital.

KEYWORDS:

• Emerging economies
• country classification
• economic growth
• panel data

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• C10
• O11
• O47

Acknowledgements

The author would like to sincerely thank the members of the Turin Centre on Emerging Economies for the inspiring discussions on the concept of emerging economies and, in particular, Mario Deaglio, Giovanni Balcet, Vittorio Valli, Lino Sau, Augusto Ninni and Elena Vallino.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.