What will the ranks of the world’s leading multinational corporations (MNCs) look like 25-50 years from now? And what will be the effect of the rebalancing of economic activity towards China and India, in particular, if they continue to grow rapidly and regain some of the share of gross domestic product that they ceded in the 19th and most of the 20th centuries?

At one extreme, one might imagine companies from these and other emerging markets crowding out ones from advanced economies: what has been dubbed the decline of the west and the rise of the rest. At the other, one could conceive of the companies from emerging markets continuing to be confined to marginal positions, with a few exceptions of the sort that we are already starting to see. Which of these extremes is likely to prove closer to the mark?