Chetan Ahya & team
Morgan Stanley
Morgan Stanley rises from runner-up to third place. The 12-member team — with economists working out of Hong Kong, Mumbai and Singapore — is captained by Chetan Ahya. Asia faces three major macroeconomic challenges, he says: slowing increases in working-age populations, especially in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan; receding growth in productivity; and declining demand for exports as developed markets deleverage. “We expect these domestic and external hurdles to allow only a gradual recovery in the region’s real gross domestic product growth to 6.7 percent in 2013, up from 6.2 percent in 2012 but still lower than the 7.6 percent in 2011 — and much lower than the 9 percent average in 2003–’07,” Ahya says. India and Thailand hold the most promise over the next year or so, the economists believe, thanks to supportive government policies, including India’s efforts to lower its fiscal deficit, and Thailand’s increase in public spending and easy monetary policies. — Thomas W. Johnson