Five years on from the “End of a Golden Age”

Five years ago this October, we published a piece arguing that the “golden age” for emerging markets had ended and that they were entering a period of permanently weaker growth. Since then, many of the structural problems that we anticipated have begun to bite and growth has weakened. There’s little that governments can do to restore economies to their previous rates of expansion since these were boosted by a series of one-off factors that can’t be repeated. But at the same time, there are few signs that they are embracing the policy reforms that could help cushion the slowdown.