World Economics has developed a database upgrading GDP in Purchasing Power Parity terms The database shows the real state of over 130+ countries by factoring in rebasing estimates and the expected size of their shadow economy. The result is a dataset of crucial data for investors to see countries real economic sizes for better investment decisions.
Data showing the size of each country's economy for the past 30 years.
Data showing the size of each country's economy for the past 10 years.
World Economics has developed the Global GDP Data Quality Ratings to review the usefulness of official GDP data of individual countries. The Ratings currently cover five factors to determine data quality. Each factor is evaluated to provide country scores which are then normalised using the standard deviation of the data for each factor and combined into the DQR score using a weighted aggregate to reflect the importance of each of the individual factors.
Population data should in theory be uncontroversial but in practice many countries have horrendous data. Some politicians use population data to gain benefit (even the USA isn't immune to Trump tactics). Others lack resources to count huge populations ie Nigeria (50 countries have a population census 10 years or over out of date).
The demographics of countries across the world differ significantly, but the age profile is particularly important which can be measured through dependency ratios. Dependency ratios are economically important metrics since they approximate the relative importance of the non-working age population (old and young people) as a proportion of the total working age population.
Significant variations in the quality of both GDP and population data compounds the problems in assessing the accuracy of measurements of GDP/capita which is the proxy means used for measuring living standards across countries.
The distribution of income in an economy matters and can be measured on a country by country basis by the Gini Coefficient. The combination of GDP per capita with the Gini coefficient is a useful gauge of the extent to which an economy’s inhabitants find mass market goods and services affordable and provides valuable information to portfolio investors and to development agencies.
The HDI was created to emphasize that people and their capabilities should be the ultimate criteria for assessing the development of a country, not economic growth alone.
Governments can interfere with the production and dissemination of basic economic data in many ways. This is not only a problem evident in poor countries, although countries with autocratic systems probably suffer to a greater extent.
One of the most widely used and misused statistics is the ratio of public debt to national income as a measure of a country’s solvency. The debt-to-GDP ratio itself is measured with a country's gross sovereign debt in the numerator and GDP in the denominator.
Statistical Capacity is a nation’s ability to collect, analyse, and disseminate high-quality data about its population and economy. Quality statistics are essential for all stages of evidence-based decision-making. Data originates from the World Bank World Development Indicators Statistcal Capacity Index.