Yesterday, I posted on the new Prosperity Index that ranked Finland first, Canada seventh, and the United States ninth. Last evening, my colleague Charlotta Mellander took a quick look at some factors that might be associated with a high ranking, running some simple statistical correlations. The most highly correlated factors (all with a correlation coefficient above .75): total factor productivity, human capital, the creative class, GDP per capita, and entrepreneurship. The Prosperity Index was highly correlated with the UN Human Development Index (at nearly .9) and reasonably so with a Gallup’s measure of subjective well-being or happiness (just a hair under .75).
October 29th, 2009 at 11:11 am
Uh… why are you doing this? Are you trying to reverse engineer the rankings?
Following up on my comments to the last post, I think that TFP and GDP per capita are excellent measures of prosperity. That the rankings correlate fairly well (0.75 correlation coefficient is OKAY, not great) goes some way to alleviate my concern that this is a measure of a country’s “Scandanavianivity”, not prosperity.
November 4th, 2009 at 3:00 am
I still don’t buy it. It’s impossible to know what all of the statistics are derived from but clearly America is the ingenuity capital of the world, setting aside other fluctuating factors. In simple and big ways, America continues to dominate on the idea front, particularly the loose and street level idea front which always give birth to the really great new and novel concepts, products, services and companies. Other countries may be catching-up and that’s certainly something to celebrate– but I don’t buy the numbers.
November 10th, 2009 at 11:25 am
America continues to dominate on the idea front……
That is a very North American perspective.
Its size will always be an issue — just like Wal-Mart will dominate retail — but my work in Asia, Australia and New Zealand has proven to me that it does not always get it right. I was more than pleased when Starbucks announced it would close 61 of 80 outlets in Australia as it could not compete. The local cafes offer a level of quality and a service model (once you order, you can sit down knowing you will be served) is simply better. Starbucks was not paying attention.
People also disliked the blandness of the same interior design. I cannot image what Aussies would like of Tim Hortins. Interestingly enough, McDonalds does get it. It is the Aussie and Kiwi McDonalds which pioneered the McCafe model (starting 1995) that we are starting to see in North American.