This special symposium section of Emerging Markets Finance & Trade assembles three articles, selected on the basis of a double-blind reviewing process, from among the works presented at EuroConference 2016 – International Conference on Emerging Market Economies (http://www.fep.up.pt/conferences/euroconference2016), which took place at the School of Economics and Management of the University of Porto (FEP – Faculdade de Economia da Universidade do Porto) in Porto (Portugal), June 29–July 1, 2016. This edition of EuroConference was jointly organized by the Society for the Study of Emerging Markets (SSEM), the School of Economics and Management of the University of Porto (FEP), and the Center for Economics and Finance at University of Porto (CEF.UP).

EuroConference 2016 comprised 78 scheduled presentations, including the following three plenary sessions: a keynote speech by M. Ayhan Kose (Director of the World Bank Group’s Development Prospects Group, The World Bank; was founding Co-Editor of the IMF Economic Review and Editor of the IMF Research Bulletin) entitled “Having Space and Using It: Challenges of Fiscal Policy”; a keynote speech by Ali M. Kutan (Editor of Emerging Markets Finance & Trade; Co-Editor of Economic Systems; and Editor of Borsa Istanbul Review) entitled “Do International Institutions Affect Financial Markets? Evidence from the recent Greek Sovereign Debt Crisis,” who also delivered a special session on “How to Publish in Top Journals in Economics and Business.” This edition of EuroConference brought together close to 100 participants from 30 countries encompassing five continents, providing the opportunity for wide-ranging discussions.

This conference was focused on emerging market economies, with the organizers having invited submissions of empirical and theoretical works on the following themes (not limited to): financial markets and banking; capital flows and macroeconomic and financial stability; spillovers between advanced economies and emerging economies; challenges for emerging markets economic growth and financial stability, and implications for the global economy; institutional development and reforms and their impacts on the real and financial sectors; relative role of institutions versus economic policies for the economic growth and development; international financial institutions and their impacts on the emerging economies during the post-crisis era; impact of the global financial crisis, and European and Greek crises on the real and financial sectors; emerging market crises; regional economic integration and the cross-border trade and investment among the emerging economies; comparative studies on the economic transition and system changes in Asia, Europe and the Americas; country-specific studies on the reforms of financial markets, industrial and technology sectors, foreign trade and investment regimes, etc.; vulnerabilities in emerging market economies and policy options; monetary policies and fiscal policies, their interactions, and their effects on the economies; sustainable development of the global economy and emerging markets in the context of arising geo-political conflicts; and emerging markets and the future of the international monetary system.

With the growing importance and global integration of emerging market economies, it is all the more central to understand the challenges they face. The articles featured in this special symposium section address topical challenges in the recent experience of these economies. These include not only the Global Financial Crisis, together with lessons from it, but also other dimensions of those challenges. By analyzing this recent experience, these works add to the knowledge that is key to deal with future challenges.

In the first article, Huidrom, Kose, and Ohnsorge trace the experience of emerging and developing economies regarding their fiscal space and fiscal policy before and after the 2008–2009 Great Recession. They do so on the basis of different measures and empirical approaches, including event study and structural vector autoregression analyses. This study finds that those economies increased fiscal space prior to that episode, to which they responded with salient expansionary fiscal policy. Moreover, it shows fiscal policy in those countries to have become less procyclical, so much as to turn countercyclical with the Great Recession, with the authors underlining the importance of fiscal space in this development. This study contributes to knowledge on the dynamics of fiscal space and fiscal policy in emerging and developing economies, including the recent crisis experience, which is of value for future policymaking challenges.

In the second article, Danışoğlu, Güner, and Ayaydın Hacıömeroğlu assess bank risk-taking and how it changed with the onset of the Global Financial Crisis, analyzing this experience with separate groups of countries—developed, emerging, and frontier. The authors test their hypotheses on the basis of estimations of a panel data model that controls for country-specific and bank-specific factors. To quantify risk, in addition to the Z-score, the authors propose and use a composite measure calculated with four banking risks. Beyond finding that risk increased with the crisis, not only for banks from the US and other developed countries but also for those from emerging and frontier markets, this study uncovers differences by comparing those country groups with the US. Their results contribute to knowledge on bank risk-taking behavior across country groups (including emerging market economies) around this crisis episode, which is of value for the implementation of regulatory measures taking stock of differing countries’ experiences.

The last article, by Yildirim, Bakır, and Savas, studies poverty in Turkey, with a focus on its persistence. It does so by way of estimating a dynamic panel probit model that controls for initial conditions and for individual heterogeneity, which allows for the identification of the nature of state dependence in poverty. In addition to finding multiple factors that contribute to the probability of being poor, the authors moreover find support for the existence of poverty dependence in Turkey, with that probability found to be augmented by the status of having been poor in the previous period. By contributing to knowledge on the dynamics of poverty in Turkey, their findings are of value toward the design of poverty reduction policies in this country and add to our understanding of this problem that affects other emerging market economies too.

I end with a thank you note to the participants of EuroConference 2016 and everyone else that contributed toward its realization and success, especially Prof. Ali M. Kutan. I hope the readers of Emerging Markets Finance & Trade find these articles useful—from the point of view of academics, policymakers, and practitioners alike—while looking forward to future editions of EuroConference.