International Economist Discusses Global Markets with GBA Students

When economist Vladimir Kvint, Ph.D., talks, people listen. After all, he made headlines in the late 1980s when he predicted the fall of the Soviet Union.

So it comes as no surprise that he packed the room when delivering a lecture on Jan. 26 at Fordham University’s Lincoln Center campus.

Kvint, a former Fordham faculty member who currently serves as professor at LaSalle University’s School of Business and president of the International Academy of Emerging Markets, regaled students from the Graduate School of Business Administration with his view on countries that make up the Global Emerging Market (GEM).

Kvint, who also serves as the chair of the Department of Financial Strategy at the Moscow School of Economics, gave a concise definition of emerging market countries, a term he said is often misused.

“Most political and business leaders still don’t understand that emerging market countries are part of the new phenomena of the global emerging market,” said Kvint, who defines emerging market countries as a group of societies that have transitioned from dictatorships to a free-market-oriented economy. The countries have an expanding middle class, improving standards of living and social stability and tolerance.

Emerging market countries have become a huge part of the global marketplace. It’s quite a change from the global marketplace in the 1980s, which was exclusive to about 20 of the world’s richest countries, he said.

Kvint, who was born in Russia, is the first professor in Europe and the United States to teach a course on the global emerging market, which he said is a force the global economy needs to reckon with. One only need to check World Bank data to see that emerging market countries are at the top when it comes to highest foreign currency reserve, highest level of education and in acquisitions of United States targets.

“The current economic crisis shows that recovery can be found on the path of tighter cooperation with the GEM,” Kvint said.

Among the emerging market countries, Kvint said, are Albania, Singapore, Brazil, the Russian Federation, Indonesia and South Korea.

“This trend will continue,” he said. “If you think that disintegrations of dictatorships is done, you are mistaken.”

Kvint, who is an author of 21 books and more than 350 articles, most recently penned The Global Emerging Market: Strategic Management and Economics (Routledge, 2009). It provides a definition of the global emerging market and the global business order and maps out the way that companies, countries and multilateral institutions cooperate with each other in the international order.

Currently, companies from developed nations have a presence in more than 80 emerging market countries, Kvint said. Products from the global emerging market account for more than 45 percent of the world economic output, which is why there is a need for a new global business order.

“Inequality in wealth distribution and income distribution is unprecedented,” Kvint said. “Worldwide, we need to develop a new global order. The one we have now was built during World War II.”

In today’s world, new agencies such as those that conduct credit ratings for global companies are needed, Kvint said.
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The only way to decrease inequality is to control corruption,” he said. “We have to change functions of multilateral institutions, which are outdated and controlled by wealthy nations. We also must stop helping emerging market countries. Emerging market countries are a beacon for remaining developing countries and for underdeveloped countries. They can survive by themselves. They aren’t only partners of developed countries. They are competitors to developed countries.”

The lecture was coordinated by Joyce Orsini, Ph.D., director of the Fordham Deming Scholars MBA Program. Orsini invites her former colleague to speak to Deming Scholars each year.

“He is fantastic,” Orsini said. “He is the leading expert in emerging market growth.”

The GBA’s Deming Scholars MBA Program is an 18-month, full-time honors curriculum that integrates Fordham’s MBA business courses with theory and practical business experience.