Factors explaining emerging economies’ growth slowdown

Over the past decade, emerging market economies have staged a period of impressive growth, boosting their share in world GDP. In recent years, however, growth in emerging markets has slowed substantially and is projected to remain sluggish for the foreseeable future. The aim of the article is to highlight several structural factors that can explain this synchronised slowdown. The article focuses on four structural factors that have already had an impact on the economic performance of emerging economies. These include the rebalancing of growth in China, with significant spillover effects on other emerging market as well as advanced economies ; the recent slump in commodity prices ; an excessive build-up of private sector leverage in Central and Eastern European countries in the run-up to the crisis and changing trends in global value chains. The article continues by looking at two factors that will play out in the more medium term, i.e. the middle-income trap – a sustained period of low growth following a period of high growth, largely attributable to a slowdown in productivity growth – and the gradual disappearance of the demographic dividend in some emerging market countries.