Emerging Insights

For three decades, oil was the engine of Kazakhstan's post-Soviet prosperity, lifting it to middle-income status and turning it into a darling of frontier market investors. Today, that same oil is the source of a profound national crisis, as the dependencies created during the boom years have transformed into crippling liabilities. The country's economic model was built on a series of calculated risks that have now all come due at once. The most critical was an infrastructure

Executive Summary For decades, a set of archetypal national growth models (from Germany’s export-led manufacturing to the commodity-driven expansion of nations like Brazil and Saudi Arabia) provided a conventional playbook for economic development. However, a confluence of structural shifts in the global economy, including geopolitical realignment, supply chain reconfiguration, and an accelerated energy transition, is placing these once-reliable models under unprecedented str

Executive Summary Emerging market governments are in a global race to build the next Silicon Valley, often launching ambitious, top-down initiatives that consume vast resources with little to show for it. This policy brief argues for a fundamental shift in approach. Instead of chasing grand, headline-grabbing projects, policymakers should focus on systematically removing the foundational barriers that entrepreneurs face daily. This toolkit provides a practical, action-oriente

Tracking Renminbi Internationalization Amid Global Economic Realignment Executive Summary The third quarter of 2025 has been a period of significant and complex developments in the internationalization of the Chinese renminbi (RMB). While the yuan has shown resilience and made notable inroads in specific areas, its path to becoming a major global currency remains uneven. This report analyzes the key trends and events from Q3 2025, providing a data-driven assessment of the RMB

The emerging-markets rally isn't just about cycling into cheap valuations. Structural shortages in labor and commodities could turn the developing world into the next long-duration growth story. Emerging market stocks have posted their strongest run in over a decade. The iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF is up 28.7%  this year after nine straight months of gains . Goldman Sachs expects the rally to continue through 2025, driven by falling inflation, a weaker dollar, and impro

Executive Summary Emerging and frontier markets are at a critical juncture, facing immense pressure to adopt and develop sovereign technologies, particularly in the realms of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and national artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. Driven by the promise of technological leapfrogging and geopolitical positioning, many governments are launching ambitious, high-profile projects. However, a closer examination reveals a perilous trend: a rush

Executive Summary While the last several decades of trade negotiations have focused on the movement of goods and capital, the next phase of structural change will incresingly be defined by the cross-border flow of human capital. Advanced economies are now confronting the economic consequences of long-term demographic trends, leading to acute labor shortages and an intensification of global competition for talent. This is altering the traditional dynamics of skilled migration,

For two decades, a plurality of small economies have built their position in the global marketplace on a simple premise: China's insatiable appetite for inputs. It's well known though that this engine of global growth is sputtering under the weight of debt, demographics, Donald (Trump), and a dosage of the middle income trap. Yet, as China's property sector unravels and its economy pivots away from heavy industry, a new narrative has taken hold in policy circles and investmen

Tracking Renminbi Internationalization Amid Global Economic Realignment Executive Summary The second quarter of 2025 presented a more challenging environment for the internationalization of the Chinese renminbi (RMB). After a period of steady gains, the yuan experienced a notable setback in its share of global payments, highlighting the currency's ongoing vulnerability to global economic shifts and competitive pressures. Despite this, underlying trends, such as the growing fo

For two decades, China's investment-led growth model was the primary driver of a global commodity super-cycle. Its ongoing structural slowdown, precipitated by a deep crisis in its property sector, marks a definitive end to this era. This analysis examines the extent to which India's rising demand for industrial and energy commodities can offset the deceleration in Chinese consumption through 2030. Our findings reveal a significant divergence in demand patterns: while India's

Abstract Investors have historically rewarded divided governments for the policy stability they are perceived to create. Yet this conventional wisdom is becoming increasingly untenable in an era of deepening political fragmentation. The nature of gridlock has evolved from a source of healthy checks and balances to a driver of dysfunctional paralysis, creating significant, and often mispriced, medium- to long-term risks. Through case studies of fiscal decay, erosion of state c

Executive Summary Beijing’s campaign to internationalize the renminbi (RMB) is often interpreted through a geopolitical lens as a direct challenge to the supremacy of the U.S. dollar. However, new analysis reveals a more pragmatic driver behind the yuan’s growing global role: economic survival. Data from the Center for Emerging Economies’ Yuan Adoption Tracker shows that emerging markets are not ditching the dollar in alignment with a Chinese political project, but rather as

Tracking Renminbi Internationalization Amid Global Trade Realignment Executive Summary The first quarter of 2025 was defined by a major leap forward in the development of China's alternative financial infrastructure, marking one of the most significant periods for the renminbi's (RMB) internationalization in recent years. The official launch of a dedicated cross-border settlement system for the digital yuan (e-CNY) represented a landmark achievement, creating a new, technolog

Outsourced currency printing creates economic security vulnerabilities in emerging economies   Executive Summary State-owned or affiliated currency printing operations by aggressive states increasingly represent a previously underappreciated vector for economic statecraft. Chinese and Russian state printers are leveraging currency contracts to collect financial intelligence, enable sanctions evasion, and create economic leverage at the expense of economic sovereignty.   Chine

Executive Summary Washington's strategic community has spent the past several years debating whether an "Asian NATO" is emerging in the Indo-Pacific. The question itself may be misleading. What is taking shape across the region bears less resemblance to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization than to an earlier, and ultimately more consequential, experiment in strategic cooperation: the European Economic Community and its predecessor, the European Coal and Steel Community. The

For more than three decades, the Washington Consensus has promoted capital account liberalization as a cornerstone of economic development. The logic appeared unassailable: emerging markets, constrained by domestic savings, would benefit from access to global capital pools, which would finance investment, accelerate productivity growth, and raise living standards. While policymakers acknowledged the risks-sudden stops, currency crises, and financial instability-the prevailing

Executive Summary Across the Middle East, a critical and often misunderstood phenomenon is reshaping economies and consolidating authoritarian power: the deep economic integration of national militaries. This paper provides a comparative analysis of the military-economic complexes in Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, revealing a spectrum of models from the deeply entrenched, autonomous "praetorian landlords" to state-directed industrial projects. In Egypt, Paki

Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced an $85.2 million settlement with Telefónica Venezolana, the Venezuelan subsidiary of the Spanish telecommunications giant Telefónica, S.A. The case, resolved through a deferred prosecution agreement, was for conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). At first glance, it appeared to be a standard FCPA enforcement action: a multinational subsidiary bribing foreign officials to secure a business advan

Rising yuan adoption during sanctions surges and US dollar strength reflects a hunt for economic survival rather than geopolitical realignment   Introduction Beijing’s push to internationalize the renminbi (RMB) is often viewed through a geopolitical lens within China’s broader effort to redefine and recreate international architecture for its benefit. This is especially true in western financial press, which has fanned worries that the Chinese currency could challenge US dol

As the war in Ukraine persists, western multinational companies operating in Russia find themselves in an increasingly intricate and expensive business landscape. Despite promises to minimize their Russian exposure following the country's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, many companies remain entangled in a web of sanctions, countermeasures, and legal battles. This analysis explores the challenges faced by these multinationals and the consequences of their continued presence i

The global economy is exhibiting increasing signs of divergence, with the United States charting a course of robust growth while other major economies like the United Kingdom and Japan face economic contractions and heightened uncertainties. This pattern of divergence, underscored by the latest economic performance data, is set to continue, driven by structural changes in demographics, savings rates, and government spending. In the closing months of last year, both the U.K. a