Developing nations that can’t make the grade as emerging markets fall into a chaotic Fourth World category known as “frontier markets.” This is a world where insider trading can run rampant because it’s officially tolerated, where financial data are spotty because the authorities don’t demand clarity, and where the worst risks call for armed bodyguards. My team’s security details in Pakistan suggest that in hotel lobbies you should always sit in a small chair, not a couch, so you can quickly pull the furniture over you in case of an explosion. Research on the frontier is often conducted by pressing one’s ear to the walls: when one of my analysts recently asked a member of the crowd milling aimlessly around the Kuwait stock exchange what they were waiting for, the reply was, “Rumors.”
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