Decoupling: Myth or Reality?

When, in the mid-2000s, large parts of the global South experienced an impressive economic boom, the idea that a number of emerging market economies were “decoupling” from the industrialized economies in the North gained considerable prominence. The financial and economic crisis that originated in the US and the global recession that it entailed, however, put this idea into question. The present paper analyzes different channels of crisis transmission and crisis effects in emerging markets (and the BRIC countries in particular) to demonstrate that decoupling is a myth rather than reality.