Research Topics
Publications on BRICS
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The BRICS Initiatives in the Current Global Conjuncture
Policy Note 2015/5 | August 2015An Assessment in the Context of the IMF Rulings for Greece
Developing countries, led by China and other BRICS members (Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa), have been successfully organizing alternative sources of credit flows, aiming for financial stability, growth, and development. With their goals of avoiding International Monetary Fund loan conditionality and the dominance of the US dollar in global finance, these new BRICS-led institutions represent a much-needed renovation of the global financial architecture. The nascent institutions will provide an alternative to the prevailing Bretton Woods institutions, loans from which are usually laden with prescriptions for austerity—with often disastrous consequences for output and employment. We refer here to the most recent example in Europe, with Greece currently facing the diktat of the troika to accept austerity as a precondition for further financial assistance.
It is rather disappointing that Western financial institutions and the EU are in no mood to provide Greece with any options short of complying with these disciplinary measures. Limitations, such as the above, in the prevailing global financial architecture bring to the fore the need for new institutions as alternative sources of funds. The launch of financial institutions by the BRICS—when combined with the BRICS clearing arrangement in local currencies proposed in this policy note—may chart a course for achieving an improved global financial order. Avoiding the use of the dollar as a currency to settle payments would help mitigate the impact of exchange rate fluctuations on transactions within the BRICS. Moreover, using the proposed clearing account arrangement to settle trade imbalances would help in generating additional demand within the BRICS, which would have an overall expansionary impact on the world economy as a whole.
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The Global Crisis and the Implications for Developing Countries and the BRICs
Public Policy Brief No. 102, 2009 | August 2009Is the B Really Justified?
The term BRIC was first coined by Goldman Sachs and refers to the fast-growing developing economies of Brazil, Russia, India, and China–a class of middle-income emerging market economies of relatively large size that are capable of self-sustained expansion. Their combined economies could exceed the combined economies of today’s richest countries by 2050. However, there are concerns about how the current financial crisis will affect the BRICs, and Goldman has questioned whether Brazil should remain within this group.
Senior Scholar Jan Kregel reviews the implications of the global crisis for developing countries, based on the factors driving global trade. He concludes that there is unlikely to be a return to the extremely positive conditions underlying the recent sharp increase in growth and external accounts. The key for developing countries is to transform from export-led to domestic demand-led growth, says Kregel. From this viewpoint, Brazil seems much better placed than the other BRIC countries.
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