EAGLES

There's the symbol of America. There's the football team that will eventually become the main topic of conversation anytime you start talking to someone from Philadelphia. There's the band that made you stop listening to classic rock (there being a natural limit to the number of times any human can listen to "Hotel California," though at Shmoop we're still breaking the record).

Then there's the acronym describing a certain type of developing economy.

The financial EAGLE was created by a bank named BBVA in 2010 to describe a certain type of emerging economy. It's kind of like a category...like how a kid goes from being a baby to being a child to being a tween to being a teen to being an adult (eventually, we guess). EAGLE might be the "tween" category for economic development: high growth, high volatility, a lot of upside but a lot of development still needed.

EAGLE stands for "emerging and growth-leading economies." Countries can move in and out of the list depending on the structure and performance of their economies. The economies need to be big enough (more than $100 billion...sorry, Iceland), but not so big that they are part of the world's big economic powers. The economies also need to be high growth, contributing more to world growth than the average non-G7 developed economy.

The current list (as of 2016) includes some predictable big names: Brazil, India, China, and Russia. It also includes some smaller up-and-comers: Iran, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Pakistan, Egypt, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Philippines, Turkey, and Vietnam