The positive impact of these financial market and macroeconomic developments have been put to the test on numerous occasions since the 1997/1998 crisis. The most recent event has been that of the US sub-prime mortgage market. This episode has been well documented  BIS Review 125/2007  5  and I shall therefore not spend time on its detail.
Nonetheless, caution is called for when looking at projections for this group of economies as a whole, as they mask salient divergences and a high degree of heterogeneity in terms of individual economies’ and regional performance.