Developed market economies, bloated and solipsistic as they are, hog as much attention as they can in the field of global economics. Currently they are dominating a debate about an apparent slowdown in long-term rates of growth, which generally goes under the name of “secular stagnation”.

Yet, as the International Monetary Fund and others have warned, the phenomenon of slowing trend growth stretches across emerging markets too — if anything even more so. The causes may be different, but the challenge of reversing the unwelcome development is no less difficult. Not only that, but the unusual pattern of the slowdown must surely raise some questions about how durable it is.

In a recent, much-read, analysis, the IMF says that “secular” or trend growth has fallen across the developed markets from 2.25 per cent before the crisis to 1.6 per cent over the next five years, with an even sharper fall among EM countries. Having risen in the decade before the crisis to 7.2 per year — and the rise was in EM countries as a whole, not just China — trend growth since 2008 has slid to 6.5 per cent and is expected to drop over the next five years to 5.2 per cent.