This November will mark the 20th anniversary of the BRIC acronym that I coined to capture the economic potential of Brazil, Russia, India, and China. Many commentators will be revisiting the concept and assessing each country’s performance since 2001 - so here are my own thoughts on the matter.

First, and contrary to repeated suggestion, the main point of my original November 2001 paper, “The World Needs Better Economic BRICs,” was neither to forecast endless growth for these economies, nor to promote some new marketing concept for investment funds. As anyone who read that paper will know, the central argument was tha...