Intro - Emerging Markets 2023

Our emerging market indexes are built with the aim to help you detect new sources of return in rapidly-growing economies around the world.

MSCI has an extensive history working in emerging markets, helping shape the investment landscape into what it is today. The term “Emerging Markets” was originally coined in 1981 by a World Bank economist and it helped established emerging markets as a distinct investment class. In 1988, MSCI launched the MSCI Emerging Markets Index — one of the first investable benchmark index global equity markets in the space. Today, we have over $1.3 trillion in assets under management benchmarked to our emerging markets indexes1.


Allocating - Emerging Markets 2023

Allocating to emerging markets today

Emerging markets accessibility has changed dramatically since 1988. Over the years, countries have been added and removed from the MSCI Emerging Markets Index based on our market classification framework that assesses economic development, size and liquidity, and market accessibility.


MSCI Emerging markets - Emerging markets 2023

MSCI Emerging Markets Index2

  • 24Countries

  • 10.9%Weight in MSCI ACWI Index

  • 1,379Constituents

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Building tools - Emerging markets 2023

Building tools for the shifting EM playbook

What is EM investing?

  • At MSCI, we approach EM as an asset class for core allocation capable of providing risk diversification to institutional portfolios.
  • EM countries have, on average, a younger workforce with a growing purchasing power which may be able to support ongoing economic growth.
  • Capital market liberalization and improved market accessibility in EM continue to draw investors to those markets.

MSCI has witnessed the decades-long evolution of EM as an asset class. As the landscape has transformed, we have worked to identify what indexes may help investors capture new market fundamentals and to better understand how geopolitical shifts, such as China’s growing economic power, may impact global portfolios.

We create indexes that are designed to adapt to the dynamic nature of the emerging markets opportunity set and its growing market capitalization. Over time we have expanded our emerging markets index range to cover multiple of investment themes, across ESG, Climate, Factors and Thematic topics.


Interactive Assets

MSCI Emerging Markets Index

Emerging Markets Countries

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    Spotlight & Featured content - Emerging markets 2023

    Spotlight on Emerging Markets research


    Targeting Focused Exposures - Emerging Markets 2023

    Targeting Focused Exposures


    Targeting focus - Emerging markets 2023

    An evolving - Emerging Markets 2023

    An Evolving Ecosystem


    Evolving Ecosystem - Emerging markets 2023

    Asset allocation title - Emerging Markets 2023

    Asset Allocation in Emerging Markets


    Asset Allocation - Emerging Markets 2023

    Learn more - Emerging Markets 2023

    Emerging Markets video series


    Related content - Emerging markets 2023

    Footnotes - Emerging Markets 2023

    1 Source: MSCI, as at December 31, 2022
    2 Source: MSCI, as at March 2023