Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of financial reporting regulation in emerging markets and newly industrializing countries (NICs). Emerging markets are characterized by social or business activity undergoing a rapid growth and industrialization process, assisted by government policies favoring economic liberalization and the adoption of a free-market system (Hoskisson et al., 2000). NICs are countries having economies that have not yet reached developed status but have, in a macroeconomic sense, outpaced their developing counterparts (Wikipedia). The emerging market and NIC share of world gross domestic product (GDP) stood at 38 per cent in 2010, twice that in 1990. Measuring GDP at purchasing-power parity, emerging market countries actually overtook the developed world in 2008. Emerging economies attracted over half of all inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI), courtesy of these countries’ fast-growing domestic markets ( The Economist, 2011). The exact number of emerging market countries is difficult to identify precisely, since the numbers change with time. The big emerging market economies are Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Philippines, Poland, Russia, and Turkey.