Country Index-itis

Too many country indices out there. Just in the last few days I saw the following indices:

Global Peace Index (2014 version)

Good Country Index (2014, table from the Economist)

I´m questioning whether these indices have any real uses.

Separately, it seems they all end up with the same results with the Scandinavian countries, Switzerland and Canada/Australia/New Zealand in the top 10.

Patent Registration by Latin American Inventors and Applicants - Follow-up

In an earlier post, we looked at patent registrations by Latin American investors and applicants. Earlier this week there was an article in one oh Chile´s leading newspapers (El Mercurio) analying the same topic. While the results are broadly consistent, details differ substantially. Our assumption is that the main reason for the differences are the use of a different database: EPO in our case, INAPI (Instituto Nacional de Propiedad Industrial, the Chilean patent office) in the case of "El Mercurio".

We will only provide an update of the EPO numbers in the beginning of 2015.

World´s Largest Container Fleets

Alphaliner publishes a list of the largest container fleets. The top 10 fleets are are follows. The three largest fleets are from Denmark, Switzerland and France respectively. 5 of the top 10 are Asian operators, 4 European and 1 US. CSAV from Chile used to be in the top 10, but has over the years dropped to the 20th position and has just agreed to merge with Hapag-Lloyd.

Nuclear Threat Index (NTI) - 2014

The Nuclear Threat Index is published by the NTI (Nuclear Threat Initiative). The index data for 2014 can be downloaded here.

For the 25 countries with nuclear material, the results are as follows (light green highest score = Australia followed by Canada and Switzerland, red lowest score North Korea followed by Iran and India).

Correlation of Economic Growth with Population Growth

It is trivial that population growth and economic growth are (strongly) correlated. We wanted to reconfirm this relationship with actual data and also analyze the more crucial question how population growth and per capita economic growth are related.

Results significantly depend on the choice of countries and reference period (for measuring economic growth and population growth).

We decided to use the data from the Credit Suisse's research Institute, namely the Credit Suisse Global Investment Returns Yearbook 2014 (actually panning a second post to verify Piketty´s r>g claims).

Credit Suisse data is for the period 1900-2013 and itself based on Maddison (which we had previously used). Obviously there is significant uncertainty with regard to concept of economic growth in the early part of the 20th century (Kuznets' initial calculation for the US were made in 1937).

The data for the 21 countries in the data set looks as follows:

And the followoing correlation matrix confirms:
- positive correlation between population growth and GDP growth (correlation coefficient of 0.65)
- negative correlation between population growth and GDP growth per capita (correlation coefficient of -0.45)

Usual caveat: correlation is not causation and if there is causation we don't which way the causation runs

Nevertheless, the results seem to explain why elites favor population growth while the population is more ambivalent.

World´s Smartest Cities

The IESE publishes an annual ranking of the world´s smartest cities. Here are the top 10 cities with their respective ranks in 2011, 2012 and 2013. Tokyo, London and New York are top 3. Switzerland has 3, Japan 2 countries in the top 10. Santiago de Chile is only ranked #83 (although ranked first in Latin America).

Supercomputer Ranking and Density

Top 500 Supercomputer Sites publishes a cool overview of the 500 most powerful (measured in Terra Flops) worldwide.

Here are the top 10 with five computers from the US, two from Germany and one each from China, Japan and Switzerland.

Looking at the whole list (500 super computers) the country distribution is as follows with the US dominating followed by China and Japan.

An a per capita basis, the US is still leading followed by Switzerland and Norway. The relatively low density of Germany and Japan may be surprising.

Patent Registration by Latin American Inventors and Applicants

The European Patent Office allows to search patent filing by a number of criteria, including country of inventor and applicant, publication data and classification (the search is for worldwide patent offices).

The following provides ans overview of Latin American (plus Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, French Guiana, Guayana and Suriname) countries in comparison with Spain and Portugal. Both the absolute number of filings and the filings per capita are shown (the data is shown for 2013 and the criteria was that at least one of the applicants and one of the inventors came from the respective country):

The leading country is Uruguay followed by Chile and Trinidad & Tobago. Compared to Portugal and especially Spain, there is still significant catching-up to do in Latin America (noting the Portugal and Spain also have a relatively low patent rate compared to the leading countries). The same information is shown graphically:

For Chile the development since 1990 has been as follows (significant increase since around 2000):

In terms of categories the distribution is as follows:

Luxury Car Density (2014 Update)

The following provides an update to an analysis we made in 2012, looking at the luxury car density across countries, posted here and here.

Again we looked at the number of listings on the OOYYO Network. This time we reduced the brands included only six main brands from Italy (Ferrari, Lamborghini and Maserati) and UK (Aston Martin, Bentley and Rolls Royce).

The density calculated as the listings on the site for the referenced brands divided by the total listings looks as follows (see map and table). The observations made in 2012 are repeated:

• very high densities for Luxembourg, Switzerland and Singapore
• high rates for UK and Italy
• medium-high rates for Western Europe, Sweden and Canada
• medium-low rates for Scandinavia (ex Sweden), US, Australia and New Zealand

Outliers include Lithuania, Malaysia, Slovakia and Nigeria. Note the some of these outliers might be driven by the fact that the density relative to all offered car is shown (and not per capita).

Without further comments, the map looks as follows:

And here the data table:

Preferred Podcasts

The following provides an overview of my favourite podcast (in English and German):

• Common Sense with Dan Carlin (US)
• Dan Carlin's Hardcore History (US)
• BBC Documentaries (UK)
• SRF Echo der Zeit (Switzerland)
• Economist: Editor's Pick (UK)
• EconTalk (US)
• SRF International (Switzerland)
• BBC More or Less: Behind the Stats (UK)
• Nature Podcast (UK)
• NPR Planet Money (US)
• NPR TED Radio Hour (US)
• SFR Trend (Switzerland)
• FT World Weekly (UK)

So far I have not encountered a podcast in Italian, Spanish or French which I found worth listening too (only referring to languages I would be able to understand).