In 2001, the economies of Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRICs) were predicted to grow faster than many others; this prediction turned out to be true. In this technical note, the challenge is to identify the new BRICs in 2023. Students will investigate the following questions: What are the economics behind BRICs? How do investors and managers identify the next BRIC countries (i.e., the next high-growth economies)? Could the economic frameworks underlying BRICs analysis provide some clarity after the fog of the COVID-19 pandemic and war in Europe? This note includes a short explanation of the Solow growth model, an exploration of growth factors not considered in that model, and data for emerging-market economies in 2000. Finally, it offers a range of perspectives on growth factors and suggests an updated analysis of growth prospects and possible new BRICs in 2023. At the Darden School of Business, this note is taught in the first-year core GEM course and used in the Global Financial Markets course.

This note discusses identifying the potential future fragile and high-growth economies.

A government's impact on the economy is not limited to taxes, spending, and monetary policy. As any manager can attest, regulations dramatically impact the way managers think about production. An effective regulatory environment will allow both new and existing firms to grow and innovate. Burdensome regulations can lower economic productivity and employment, and are associated with higher levels of informal economic activity and employment. This technical note addresses the annual Doing Business report published by the World Bank, which aims to capture the differences in regulations between countries. Doing Business summarizes these finding in an absolute score and a relative ranking. The doing business score measures how a given country's regulatory environment compares to the global best practice. Scores can range between 0 to 100, with 100 corresponding to the best performance. Those scores are then sorted to give the final ease of doing business ranking, in which countries are ranked from 1 (best score) to 190 (worst).