Frontier market
type of developing country which is more developed than the least developing countries, but too small, risky, or illiquid to be generally considered an emerging market
A frontier market is a term for a type of developing country's market economy which is more developed than a least developed country's, but too small, risky, or illiquid to be generally classified as an emerging market economy. The term is an economic term which was coined by International Finance Corporation's Farida Khambata in 1992. The term is commonly used to describe the equity markets of the smaller and less accessible, but still "investable" countries of the developing world. The frontier, or pre-emerging equity markets are typically pursued by investors seeking high, long-run return potential as well as low correlations with other markets. Some frontier market countries were emerging markets in the past, but have regressed to frontier status.
Terminology
The term began use when the IFC Emerging Markets Database (EMDB), led by Farida Khambata, began publishing data on smaller markets in 1992. Khambata coined the term "Frontier Markets" for this set of indices. Standard and Poor's bought EMDB from IFC in 1999 and in October 2007, S&P launched the first investable index, the Select Frontier Index (30 of the largest companies from 11 countries) and the Extended Frontier Index (150 companies from 27 countries). Subsequently, MSCI began a rival frontier market index, and in early 2008, Deutsche Bank launched the first frontier market exchange-traded fund, on the London Stock Exchange.
Frontier markets are a sub-set of emerging markets, which have market capitalizations that are small and/or low annual turnover and/or market restrictions unsuitable for inclusion in the larger EM indexes but nonetheless "demonstrate a relative openness to and accessibility for foreign investors" and are not under "extreme economic and political instability."
Members could be considered to fall roughly into three groups:
Small countries of relatively high development level (such as Estonia) that are too small to be considered emerging markets,
Countries with investment restrictions that have begun to loosen as of the mid 2000s (such as the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council)
Countries at a lower development level than the existing "mainstream" emerging markets (such as Kenya or Vietnam).
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Frontier market” is type of developing country which is more developed than the least developing countries, but too small, risky, or illiquid to be generally considered an emerging market. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Frontier, market and type, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “type of developing country which is more developed than the least developing countries, but too small, risky, or illiquid to be generally considered an emerging market” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q732352. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1992, 1999, 2007 and 2008.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Frontier market” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.