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Emerging Markets Symposium

Since the turn of the century emerging markets have become an increasingly popular topic in universities, research centres, banks, consulting firms and corporations in emerging markets and wealthy countries. Competing in the marketplace for ideas they have offered undergraduate and graduate programmes, conferences, seminars and forums on trade, capital flows, foreign investment, macro-economic policies and social and environmental issues. Some have confined themselves within disciplinary boundaries (economics, finance, demography, education, health, ecology, sociology, anthropology). Others have roamed across them. Their interests have varied from those of emerging market governments, businesses, civil societies and foreign (direct and financial) investors to those of specific populations (the poor, minorities, children, young people, the ageing). Some seek to help emerging markets address economic and social issues. Others, for whom emerging markets are investment opportunities seek to help themselves.

The Emerging Markets Symposium (EMS) was created in 2008 as an academic initiative of Green Templeton College. The decision to launch the EMS expressed Green Templeton’s commitment to promote understanding of the issues of managing human welfare in the modern world and its particular commitment to the flow of ideas across traditional disciplinary and professional boundaries. The decision was based on three premises:

1. Issues of human welfare were nowhere more challenging, more in need of rigorous scrutiny, more critical in their own right or more serious constraints to sustainable growth, social cohesion and political stability than in emerging markets.

2. There was an urgent need to fill voids arising from the facts that despite growing interest in emerging markets, existing forums did not:

  • Reflect the magnitude, complexity and urgency of human welfare issues;
  • Address issues from multiple perspectives within comprehensive frameworks;
  • Produce actionable recommendations that could add value to policy makers;
  • Blend sectoral experience (governments, business, civil society, academe); or
  • Capture the benefits of multi-disciplinary approaches to complex issues.

3. Green Templeton College had the capacity to fill these voids.