Chapter 1.1: Introduction

The twenty-first century has set the stage for global economic power to shift in favour of emerging countries. Emerging market economies have assumed a crucial role in becoming significant drivers of global growth since the turn of the millennium. Moreover, the ever-increasing complexity, fragility and transparency of the world economy has taken its toll, leading to intense suffering in developed countries, particularly on occasions of economic crises, while emerging countries enjoy high growth rates. According to the Euromonitor International’s report, emerging economies are expected to grow approximately three times faster than the developed economies, which is to account for approximately 65% of the global economic growth by the year 2020. Economies of the emerging countries are expected to rapidly catch up, if not supersede, the progress of the developed countries by 2020. In a similar vein, the Turkish economy is expected to grow bigger than that of Italy by the year 2030 as forecasted in PWC’s The World in 2050 report.