'Challenges of catch-up: Emerging countries in the global economy'

Anastasia Likhacheva – dean, Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs, HSE University (Russia)

Igor Makarov – head, School of World Economy, HSE University (Russia)

Economic convergence has been long one of the conventional expectations of mainstream economics about the global income dynamics. Developing countries tend to grow faster than developed ones that reduces the gap in per capita incomes and global inequality. If the emerging economies fail to catch up, it is a matter of institutions and national policies rather than the feature of the international system.

However, the historical evidence makes many experts challenge the convergence hypothesis. According to the new World Bank report, since 1990 only 34 countries moved from middle-income to high-income groups, primarily due to the European integration or development of new oil resources. Most emerging economies still cannot overcome a middle-income trap. Recent developments including reconfiguration of trade and value chains, inflation and rising debt create a new challenge for emerging economies. These challenges are even more severe for the least developed countries. Most of them have not even fully overcome the consequences of COVID-19 crisis and are far from sustainable growth trajectory. Risks appear that the world may enter the period of slower convergence or even economic divergence.

Main issues for discussion:

• How do the reconfiguration and fragmentation of the global economy of the last year affect the middle- and low-income economies?

• To which extent do commodity price volatility and inflation challenge the prospects of catch-up?

• To what extent will the debt burden limit the growth of middle- and low-income economies in the coming decade?

Moderator: Alexander Kurdin – deputy dean for research, Economic Faculty, MSU (Russia)

Leonid Grigoryev – academic supervisor, School of World Economy, HSE University (Russia)

Gülbin Şahinbeyoğlu – executive director of TEPAV (Turkey)

Anastasia Podrugina – associate professor, School of World Economy, HSE University (Russia)

Ksenia Bondarenko – invited lecturer, School of World Economy, HSE University (Russia)

Nicolas Buchoud – senior advisor to the Dean and CEO, Asia Development Bank Institute, Tokyo (Japan)

Main issues for discussion:

Limited number of success stories of catch up for the last decades show that there are no universal recipes of the economic breakthrough. New economic miracles probably cannot repeat the same instruments as were used previously in economies like Singapore, Taiwan or South Korea. Environmental, geopolitical and demographic pressures create new constraints to economic growth, while automation and robotization limit the ability to use cheap labor force as a basic source of competitive advantages. In its recent report, the World Bank has provided a new model of catch-up: focus on investment first, then infusion of new technologies from abroad; and, finally, adoption of balanced strategy, combining investment, infusion, and innovation. However, this basic framework may be applied in many ways depending on economic, social and geopolitical context.

Main issues for discussion:

• May be there any universal recommendations to emerging economies trying to overcome the middle-income trap?

• What are the success stories of sustaining rapid economic growth in volatile environment of last years? What are lessons from these stories?

• How may the emerging economies exploit current geopolitical fragmentation for their benefit?

Moderator: Igor Makarov – head, School of World Economy, HSE University (Russia)

Abdelaaziz Ait Ali – head of Research in Economics, Policy Center for the New South (Morocco)

Mariam Voskanyan – chair of Economics and Finance, Russian - Armenian university (Armenia)

Varun Kumar Das – professor, University of Delhi (India)

Wei Feng – professor, dean of the Institute of Economics and Business Administration, Heilongjiang University (China)

Nodira Abdunazarova – Chief Specialist, the Project on Macroeconomic Policy and Analysis of the Institute of Macroeconomic and Regional Studies (Uzbekistan)

Evgeny Biryukov - Senior research fellow, Institute of Economic Forecasting of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Russia)

After five new countries joined BRICS in 2004, its members cover nearly 45% of world population and about 30% of global GDP. About 30 more countries are looking to join BRICS in coming years. BRICS has become the voice of Global South and the only multilateral platform where their view on international relations and global governance is shared and starts to be implemented. Russia’s BRICS Chairship in 2024 aims to foster this implementation, with some practical steps related to international financial and payment system, settlements in national currencies, food security, education, climate change mitigation and others. At the same time, BRICS expansion brought new challenges related to the need to bring diverse interests of member-states to common denominator.    

Main issues for discussion:

• What are the major results of the Russia’s BRICS Chairmanship in 2024?

• Why did the interest in joining BRICS increase dramatically for the last years?

• What is the impact of BRICS expansion on the efficiency of the club and its ability to transform global economic order?

Moderator: Aleksandra Morozkina – deputy dean for research, Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs, HSE University (Russia)

Victoria Panova (TBC) – vice rector, HSE (Russia)

Andrey Gnidchenko – senior expert, Center for Macroeconomic Analysis and Short-term Forecasting (Russia)

Bruno De Conti – (online) associate professor, University of Campinas (Brazil)

Xiaochen Hou – (online) Program Manager at the Center for BRICS Studies in Fudan University (China)

Vladimir Zuev – head of Department of Trade Policy, HSE University (Russia)

Bashir Adelowo Wahab – postdoctoral fellow at School of World Economy, HSE University (Russia)

Igor Makarov – head of the School of World Economy, HSE University (Russia)

Alexandra Khlebnova – head of Climate and Environment, ICLRC (Russia)

17 Sustainable Development Goals agreed by the global community in 2015 formed an ambitious plan to ensure the well-being of all humanity on healthy and environmentally safe planet. However, it is clear now that the world is seriously off track to achieve SDGs. Moreover, the gap that became obvious in times of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to expand after it finished. In a similar manner, the world fails to achieve Paris Agreement temperature goals, with CO₂ emissions breaking new records every year. These failures clearly illustrate the lack of solidarity, various gridlocks in global governance and the inability of humanity to change the previous short-term models of the global development. One of the practical obstacles is the lack of mechanisms to redirect financial flows and attract finance to development and climate projects in the developing world. Not only new creative solutions are needed to achieve each of SDG but also time has come to the comprehensive revision of the whole concept.  

Main issues for discussion:

• How can the world accumulate financial resources to finance SDGs fulfilment?

• What goes wrong with the current approaches to cope with climate change?

• Isn’t it time to start discussing the development agenda beyond 2030 taking into account lessons from the current failure in their achievement?

Moderator: Natalia Ivanova – academician, head of Research, Science and Innovation Department, IMEMO (Russia)

Igor Makarov – head of School of World Economy, HSE (Russia)

Anna Galkina – senior researcher, Energy Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Russia)

Kazi Sohag – senior research fellow, Ural Federal University (Russia)

Sedat Alatas – research fellow, Aydin Adnan Menderes University (Turkey)

Sergey Bobylev – head, Environmental Economics Department, Economic Faculty, MSU (Russia)

Igor Makarov – head, School of World Economy, HSE University (Russia)

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