Having experienced high economic growth in 2000s, emerging markets, especially BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), become an appealing topic for researchers. The aim of this dissertation is to address causal factors and to quantify their effects on emerging markets’ growth by examining seventeen emerging markets over period of thirteen years (2000-2012). Panel data analysis with either random effects or fixed effects method are employed in our regressions. Our findings show that economic growth in emerging markets are positively affected by growth in trading partners and growth in terms of trade, but seems to be impeded by an improvement in financial openness. Noticeably China’s economy has important impacts on other emerging markets’ growth. Conversely, growth in trade openness and in international interest rate are found not to contribute significantly to growth in emerging markets. Our research also contains some open issues which might become interesting approaches for future analysis.
Key words: emerging markets, BRICs, growth factors, panel data analysis, fixed effects, random effects