Editorial

“Welcome Letter from the Editor-in-Chief.” Emerging Markets Review, 50 (2022), 100896

Welcome to the 50th issue of the Emerging Markets Review.

In the 20 years since the Emerging Markets Review was founded the importance of emerging markets in the global economy and international financial markets has grown beyond all recognition. During this time, the journal has received considerable interest from academics, practitioners and policymakers. Our broad scope allows for research across multiple disciplines that bear on emerging markets such as finance, economics, and strategy.

The recent supply chain crisis demonstrated to everyone just how dependent major developed market economies have become on emerging markets for goods and services, whether it be raw materials, software developers, or computer processors to name but a few. At the same time, financial markets within emerging markets have greatly expanded, enabling companies to obtain financing in their domestic market, and both local and foreign investors to gain exposure to exciting new industries and opportunities.

The EMR’s primary objective is to deliver fresh insights for policy makers, corporations, and investors. Research into emerging markets is challenging. Data quality and depth varies considerably across markets and time. Different rules, regulations, market structures, and cultures mean that “one-size fits all” analyses are unlikely to yield the level of insight that policy makers, companies and investors require.

As the founding editors of the EMR noted 20 years ago, there was – and still is – a need for tools to address these and many other challenges posed by emerging markets. Tools could include (but are not limited to) innovative econometric methods, exploitation of exogenous shocks, and insightful case studies.

No matter what tools are used, the objective of research papers ought to be to deliver insights for academics,  policy makers, practitioners and other members of our profession. A critical requirement for articles to affect the thinking of our professions and to utilize our research is transparency. Papers ought to be clear and concise, and wherever possible, codes and data [subject to licensing] utilized in empirical studies should be made available.

While the EMR’s focus is on emerging markets all around the world, one region has been under-represented in terms of research – Africa. According to the United Nation’s world population prospects, by 2030, sub-Saharan Africa’s contribution to the increase in global labor force will exceed that from the rest of the world combined; yet empirical research focused on African economies and markets is sparse.

To promote research on financial markets within Africa we have partnered with S&P Capital IQ to provide Africa-based researchers with free access to Capital IQ’s databases relating to stock prices, firm fundamentals, events, macroeconomic series, and commodity prices. For more information please see our Call for African Research Proposals. We hope to build upon such partnerships with data vendors in the future.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who have invested their time and effort into the EMR whether it be the publisher, editors, authors, referees, or readers. It takes a lot of work from a lot of people to create and maintain a successful journal. Over the coming year we will be expanding the board of associate editors to help provide timely and constructive feedback to authors. As always, we welcome your comments, suggestions, and contributions.