Who will be the world's top three economic powers by 2050?

Answer 1

An interesting question.
First, we need to have an idea of what measure of "top economic power" would be...GDP per capita?
I would prefer the human development index, but that includes non-economic measures, so let's go with GDP per capita. But that isn't good enough either, doesn't Luxenmbourg have the highest GDP per capita now, and how many people would call Luxembourg an economic power? So wee need high GDP per capita and a large enough market to to make it a power.
Today we have in this category, Norway (if you call that a large enough market), US, Canada, UK at GDP of 43,500, 43,400, 35,500, 35,000 respectively.
The fastest growing GDPs (again, large markets only) we have China at 11%, India at 10%, Argentina at 8.5%, and Russia at 6.5%.
Growth rates for all of our top western countries running at about 3%.
China currently at 7,600, India at 3,800, Argentina at 15,900 and Russia at 12,100.
By 2050 (if the growth rates remain unchanged for that period of time- a rather unlikely scenario), China is by far the most powerful economy with a GDP per capita of 600,000 with Argentina next at 480,000. The UK and Canada are at the bottom of our short list at around 120,000, practically third world by comparison to China and Argentina....

Answer 2

If by economic power you mean total GDP then it will be a country with a large population, so it will probably be the top 3 on the population list list. Only poverty has kept China and India off the list since the industrial revolution but they are both becoming more prosperous.
#1 China: 1,313,973,713
#2 India: 1,095,351,995
#3 United States: 298,444,215
#4 Indonesia: 245,452,739
#5 Brazil: 188,078,227
The EU would make the top 3 if they were a single country. It also depends on how you compare. Note the large difference for non industrialized nations between using ppp which is used to determined standard of living and nominal.

Here is the current rankings using ppp.
#1 United States: $13,130,000,000,000.00
#2 China: $10,170,000,000,000.00
#3 Japan: $4,218,000,000,000.00
#4 India: $4,156,000,000,000.00
#5 Germany: $2,630,000,000,000.00
#6 United Kingdom: $1,930,000,000,000.00
#7 France: $1,891,000,000,000.00
#8 Italy: $1,756,000,000,000.00
#9 Russia: $1,746,000,000,000.00
#10 Brazil: $1,655,000,000,000.00
#11 Korea, South: $1,196,000,000,000.00
#12 Canada: $1,178,000,000,000.00
#13 Mexico: $1,149,000,000,000.00
#14 Spain: $1,109,000,000,000.00
#15 Indonesia: $948,300,000,000.00

and using nominal gdp
#1 United States: $11,667,515,000,000.00
#2 Japan: $4,623,398,000,000.00
#3 Germany: $2,714,418,000,000.00
#4 United Kingdom: $2,140,898,000,000.00
#5 France: $2,002,582,000,000.00
#6 Italy: $1,672,302,000,000.00
#7 China: $1,649,329,000,000.00
#8 Spain: $991,442,000,000.00
#9 Canada: $979,764,000,000.00
#10 India: $691,876,000,000.00
#11 Korea, South: $679,674,000,000.00
#12 Mexico: $676,497,000,000.00
#13 Australia: $631,256,000,000.00
#14 Brazil: $604,855,000,000.00
#15 Russia: $582,395,000,000.00

Answer 3

2050 is 43 years from now.

China
Middle East
USA

Answer 4

India
China
United Kingdom

Answer 5

Its really very difficult to decide. Politics is getting worse everywhere. Because politics has got no concern with its economy but with personal affairs. I'm not even sure about 2008, who knows what turn these politicians make.