Chief executives and other senior corporate leaders around the world agree that the global economy has improved in the past six months, but fewer are confident that the improvement will continue into the second half of the year. They also agree that outsourcing is good for the world economy—but somewhat less so for individual companies. And they view Asia as the region with the most promising growth prospects for 2004.

These are among the findings of a McKinsey Quarterly survey of some 7,300 senior executives from large and small companies. The survey, conducted in January, polled leaders from a wide range of industries and regions to develop a worldwide barometer of executive sentiment on economic and business trends. Subsequent surveys will update the responses and analyze changing trends.

Forty percent of the respondents came from North America; 33 percent from Europe; 16 percent from developing markets, including China and India; and 11 percent from the Asia-Pacific region, including Australia, Japan, and Singapore. Twelve percent of the respondents were chief executives.

What follows is a topic-by-topic examination of the results, broken out by region and company size where those differences reflected divergent opinions.