Introduction: BRIC and the World Economy

The BRIC countries is an expression created by the British economist Jim O’Neill from the Goldman Sachs Investment Bank that stands for Brazil, Russia, India, and China, the four largest emerging countries most analyzed and debated nowadays. These countries have had an expanded level of development opportunities, during the past few years. They have been studied together as they represent a significant change in the global markets after starting the liberalization of their economies during the 1990s. The BRIC countries’ gross domestic product (GDP) is responsible for 43% of world’s GDP, while Europe and the United States together represent 36%. The emerging countries were also responsible for 70% of the growth of the world’s GDP (Arbix and Salerno, 2008). The industrial production in the BRIC countries was very significant during the first few months of 2008, in the beginning of world recession, and they were the ones with the highest rates. China and Brazil had the highest growth rates of industrial production, 16% and 10.1%, respectively. The increase in the industrial production in India (7%) and Russia (6.7%) was lower than that of China and Brazil but still higher than in other important countries as the United States (−0.1%), Japan (1.9%), France (3.2%), and Germany (4.8%) (The Economist, 2008). Most observers are of the view that China’s progress is disproportionately better than the rest of the members of BRIC and that the emergence of China as an economic superpower is largely responsible for the geopolitical imbalance that has long-term implications. But there is no doubt that the economic transformation that is taking place in BRIC is one of the most interesting developments of the 21st century…