Emerging Markets: Understanding Growth, Governance, and Institutions
CIPE: The Center for Emerging Market Policy (CEMP) was founded in 2010 at George Mason University. What was the reason for creating it? What is the purpose and thinking behind it?
Andrew Hughes Hallett (AHH): Two key reasons, one internal and one external, played a role in creating CEMP. In the School of Public Policy we have a number of economists with particular interests. We have experts on trade and finance, foreign exchange, economic governance, integration issues, international economic policy, and regional studies. We created the Center to bring together those people with shared interests in economic policy and emerging markets. This is a comparative advantage on our part.
The other reason for creating CEMP is that emerging markets are becoming more and more important in the global economy. The financial crisis of the last three years has accelerated this process. The trends that were happening anyway are suddenly happening a lot faster so it makes sense to focus on emerging markets.
CIPE: The focus of the Center raises an interesting question: how do you define emerging markets?
(AHH): We have taken a very liberal view of what an emerging market is. There are many important issues in understanding emerging markets and they go beyond the traditional focus on Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRICs). Our scope is obviously a lot wider and includes other middle-income countries and transition economies in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
This encompassing view of emerging markets — and the relations of emerging markets to other economies — is of interest to many people. CEMP is only a few months old but we have been quite successful in terms of attracting both speakers and audiences.
Andrew Hughes Hallett and Sonia Ketkar are co-directors of the Center for Emerging Market Policies (CEMP) at the George Mason University’s School of Public Policy. The Center aims to be a premier research and teaching hub on international commerce, economics and public policy issues relating to emerging markets. The CEMP leverages George Mason University and the School of Public Policy’s considerable expertise on and interest in emerging markets to promote pioneering applied research on emerging markets in Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, and elsewhere. To learn more, visit http://policy-cemp.gmu.edu.
The views expressed by the authors are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE). CIPE grants permission to reprint, translate, and/or publish original articles from its Economic Reform Feature Service provided that (1) proper attribution is given to the original author and to CIPE and (2) CIPE is notified where the article is placed and a copy is provided to CIPE’s Washington office.
