Economic Patterns

Yesterday I did a comparison of economic growth in various countries. I was curious to see how much of the world's economy is being gabbled up by China each year. I have a listing of the GDP (PPP) of 123 countries, representing pretty much the entire global economy (the 70-odd countries left out are all very small or poor). Looking at this, I found that China gained around 8% of the global economy during the past decade, a little less than 1% a year. India, another massive and rapidly growing economy, has gained less than 2% of the global economy. China isn't the fastest growing economy, but it is large and therefore its growth has a lot of consequence.

Looking at the numbers of the other countries, I decided to see which countries were growing relative to the global mean and which were declining. I should note, declining in this sense is just relative. Nearly all countries have seen economic growth, but some more slowly than others. I started at 1989 because it's starting from that date that I have the most information but also because it's historically interesting. I went through each country and labelled their peak in relative economic size and their nadir. However, I found much more than just some countries decline and some incline, but nearly all countries fit into some category just by looking at when their peaks and nadirs were.



General growth (continuous growth since 1989): Dark Green

General decline (continuous decline since 1989): Purple

Momentum gained (decline followed by growth): Green

Momentum lost (growth followed by decline): Pink

Post-Soviet recovery (Peaks in 1989 followed by nadirs and gradual growth): Red

Virtually no change: Blue

Senegal is the only blue country. I don't know if it's just lack of information, but its position barely changed from 1989 to 2010.

I found it interesting that so much can be interpreted by just looking at relative economic figures. Post-Soviet states definitely stood out in the data. It also brings up questions such as why does virtually all of South American fall into the "momentum gained" category? What prevented their collective growth in the 1990's and why are they growing now? You might also notice that not all the former communist states are in the "Post-Soviet recovery" category. This is because while they did recover slightly at first, they have since lost relative economic position. They may in fact be wealthier now than in the 1990's, but their growth has been relatively slow.

Another pattern I found in the data was what I called the Post-Soviet Bump. While the economies of the former Communist Bloc collapsed, several countries that fall into the "general decline" category saw a temporary rise in their relative economic position.