This year, however, the fortunes of those economies have taken a turn for the worse for various reasons, and many investors are abandoning the idea that they will be able to continue the rapid growth that has characterized the past several years.

Much investor attention has therefore shifted from emerging markets to "frontier markets," a classification made up of economies smaller than those of the BRICs.

In a new column for Bloomberg View, O'Neill presents a new potential investment destination: the "MINT" economies (emphasis added):