Ruchir Sharma is a head of Emerging
Markets and Global Macro at Morgan Stanley Investment Management. He generally
spends one week per month in a developing country. He has been a contributing
editor with Newsweek and has penned essays for publications such as Wall Street
Journal, Financial Times, New York Times, Foreign Affairs, and Economic Times.
He is the writer of Best International Economic Book “Breakout Nations.”
Recently, I finished reading this book and it is the most interesting book on
economic landscape.
The book takes on a life of its own
as it delves in depth into each country and its economic drivers. China, India,
Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Europe, Turkey, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, USA etc all
find a mention and an analysis. This book tells the in depth economic
conditions of every country. It also covers past crisis of Asia, USA, Europe,
and ASEAN countries. This book is also a revelation as well as treasure trove
of information and ideas. In this book, Country Specific notions, are
challenged and disproved such as in the section of consumer demand in China.
Country specific problems that can hold it back are analysed in short and power
pack sections like welfare, investments of Indian Businesses abroad in a time
when the home country is in urgent need of capital.
It also contains graphs and
numerical which tells comparisons and analytic view of each country. Each
nation’s problems as well as enablers find adequate mentions giving a nice
balance and flow to the analysis, as well depth and convincing power. Economic,
political, crimes, as well as other problems find adequate coverage. Some
problems like crony capitalism in India, welfare state in Brazil, political
situation in Russia, olipolistic nature of Mexico, and rising inflationary
trends in India are covered in depth. Each factor that can affects growth are
looked at.
The objective of this book is to
identify Breakout Nations- the nations most likely to succeed. Both
conventional factors and unconventional factors approach in this book is right.
For example, the analysis of number of Billionaires in a nation is a
revelation. Overall, this book first, teaches one how to properly analyse a
market or a nation. Second, it is a handbook of emerging markets. It gives a
perspective of entire emerging market in a short.
A word on writing style, it is
simple and easy to understand. One does not need to be a professional economist
to understand the book. This is perhaps the most powerful plus point of this
book. It makes the entire pitch in very simple, easy to understand and
comprehend prose. It avoids needless details and voluminous analysis. The
analysis is short and up to the point. This makes for a fast read and it makes
for easy absorption of the material presented in the book.
As the Breakout Nations identified,
be prepared for a surprise. Read the book to learn more, and open your mind to
new ideas and thoughts.
