O mundo dos emergentes

Gráfico interativo de cinco indicadores macroeconômicos.
IF THE euro-area debt crisis worsens, it will drag down growth in emerging economies. The good news is that whereas most developed countries have little or no room to cut interest rates or to increase public borrowing, emerging markets as a group still have lots of monetary and fiscal firepower. This chart, based on an analysis by The Economist, ranks 27 emerging economies according to their policy wiggle-room. We used five indicators to assess each country’s ability to ease monetary policy: inflation, excess credit (the growth in bank lending minus the growth in nominal GDP), real interest rates, currency movements and current-account balances. Each country was graded on the five indicators, and the scores were then summed to produce an overall measure of monetary manoeuvrability. Next we devised a fiscal-flexibility index, combining government debt and the budget deficit. The average of the monetary and fiscal measures produces our overall “wiggle-room index”. Countries are coloured in the chart according to our assessment of their ability to ease policy: “green” means it is safe to let out the throttle, and “red” means the brakes need to stay on. It suggests that China, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia have the greatest capacity to use monetary and fiscal policies to support growth. Chile, Peru, Russia, Singapore and South Korea also get the green light. At the other extreme, Egypt, India and Poland have the least room for a stimulus. Argentina, Brazil, Hungary, Pakistan Turkey and Vietnam are also in the red zone.
Click on the tabs at the top of the chart to see rankings of individual indicators.