Kicking the Board: Emerging Economies as an Engine of Global Economy and its Institutions

This paper analyses the economic performance of emerging economies in recent years and concludes that their improvement has had direct effects on global institutions in two ways: changing the balance of power between advanced countries and emerging countries and increasing the interdependence between economies worldwide. In the first place, the recent developments in emerging and developed countries is contrasted analyzing various economic indicators such as GDP growth, saving and investment, and their related phenomena: global imbalances and international reserves accumulation; trying to explain the behavior observed in each case. On the other hand, the way in which these economic aspects have allowed the emerging countries to play a greater role in global governance is analyzed, emphasizing the most important institutional changes that occurred in recent years, such as the creation of the G20 as the main forum for global discussion and the changes it imposed in the redesigning of the international financial architecture. Finally, some of the remaining unresolved challenges are discussed.