Data Stories

(4 March 2022) The US, the EU, the UK and other allied countries have imposed sanctions against the Central Bank of Russia to limit Moscow's ability to use its foreign exchange reserves to support the Russian financial system after the largest Russian banks were cut off from the global financial messaging system SWIFT. Due to high world oil and gas prices, Russia's foreign exchange reserves had increased to a record $643 billion as of Feb. 18, 2022*Since 2014, when the first Western sanctions...

Samba TV provides viewing data that can help advertising companies understand the fluctuations of ad impressions across countries, markets, and ad categories, as well as viewership volumes at different times of day for each quarter, equipping them to find the best market, TV network, and time for their ads. Viewership data from Samba TV can also be used by advertising companies and TV networks for competitor review. On this sample dashboard, you can explore highlights of the types of insights...

(18 January 2022) In the third quarter of 2021, house prices in the eurozone rose at the fastest rate since Eurostat started recording this data in 2005. Low interest rates, supply constraints, and the boost in demand for new houses to accommodate work from home policies pushed the house price growth to the highest level since 2005, 8.4% year-over-year, in Q3 2021.House prices rose above 16% year-over-year in Q3 2021 in Lithuania, Estonia, and the Netherlands. The lowest price increases were...

(14 January 2022) Labor market conditions in the eurozone (EA19) — the E.U. member countries that use a shared single currency, the euro — improved in November, as unemployment fell to a record low since the COVID-19 pandemic started in March 2020. (December 2021 unemployment data will be released in February.) The eurozone registered a decline of 222,000 in the number of unemployed people in November compared to October, with the total down to 11.8 million. The unemployment rate fell from...

(12 January 2022) To meet its goal of net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, Europe increasingly relies on wind energy. According to data from the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E), in 2020 and 2021 wind energy generation accounted for an average of 16.3% of Europe's total electricity generation. Though wind energy helps to reduce GHG emissions, the supply of wind energy available depends heavily on wind speed. And in the event of unfavorable...

(27 December / updated 13 January 2022) As Omicron spreads around the world, many countries are facing a new wave of COVID cases. At the end of December 2021, the number of new COVID cases globally was over a million per day — surpassing the rate the world had seen in past waves — and it has more than doubled since then. However, there's a key difference from the past waves: the number of daily deaths globally continued to decline for several weeks even as cases surged. While COVID deaths have...

(24 December 2021) While many countries have started to phase out nuclear power generation under the pressure of safety concerns raised by the 2011 Fukushima accident, many Asian and Middle East countries have ambitious plans to substantially increase their nuclear power generation capacity. According to the latest data from the World Nuclear Association, the total capacity of proposed and planned nuclear reactors in Asian* countries reaches 301 Gigawatts, which is nearly twice the capacity of...

(21 December 2021) Achievement of the long-term global temperature goal — to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, ideally to 1.5 degrees, above pre-industrial levels — requires not only a transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, but also more efficient use of energy. In this dashboard we’ve put together data from different sources to estimate whether high energy prices can serve as an incentive to increase energy efficiency. Our estimates for a sample of 79 countries...

(20 December 2021) Europe, which aims to be the first climate-neutral continent by moving to a clean, circular economy, has increased its use of coal — the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel — to meet the growing demand for electricity. According to Eurostat monthly energy statistics, for January through September 2021 electricity generation by coal power plants saw a greater increase compared to the same period last year than electricity generation from other types of fuel. For the same...

(17 December 2021) With the global energy transition gaining momentum, we've employed Knoema's public data repository to rank leading economies by their energy transition progress. Knoema’s Global Energy Transition Ranking is based on four indicators: all-electric car stock, using a dataset from the International Energy Agency; wind and solar electricity capacity data, from the International Renewable Energy Agency; and net change in CO2 emissions from fossil fuels combustion between 2010 and...

(16 December 2021; updated 29 December 2021) According to aggregated storage inventory data, natural gas storage in Germany — the largest EU economy and the fifth largest economy in the world — averaged only 58% full in the first three weeks of December 2021. That is 23 percentage points below the ten-year December average for 2011 to 2020. On December 27, Germany's gas storage facilities were only 53% full. The daily average is trending downward as supplies are depleted, so the the final 2021...

(12 December 2021) In November, U.S. consumer price inflation, a measure of the cost of a wide-ranging basket of consumer goods and services, hit its highest year-over-year growth in four decades. Inflation continues to put pressure on households and businesses. The consumer price index was up 6.8% year-over-year in November, largely driven by food, energy and housing prices. Core inflation, which excludes volatile categories such as food and energy, climbed 4.9%, the highest jump since...

(02 December 2021) As governments and businesses aim to reduce carbon footprint to meet climate targets, measuring carbon emissions at global, country, and corporate levels has become extremely important. A key tool designed to reduce carbon footprint is carbon pricing/taxation, in which a government sets a price (or a carbon tax) that emitters must pay for each ton of greenhouse gas emissions they emit. Existing carbon pricing schemes tax only current carbon flows, but what about carbon...

(30 November 2021) Omicron — the new variant of SARS-CoV-2 first reported to the WHO by South Africa on November 24 — is spreading around the globe. According to GISAID data, as of November 30th Omicron had been detected in 17 countries, including South Africa, Botswana, Israel, Hong Kong, Australia, Canada, Brazil and ten European countries. Little is known about the new COVID-19 variant's contagiousness yet, but countries are already racing to contain its spread. The first known confirmed...

(23 November 2021) Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a basic measure of the overall size of a country's economy and is often used to compare different countries' economic power. But what exactly is compared when someone says that the GDP of country A is larger than the GDP of country B? The System of National Accounts (SNA) of the United Nations defines GDP as a monetary value of final goods and services — that is, what end users actually purchase — produced in a country, along with some...

(19 November 2021) Consumer price inflation, a gauge of the cost of living, accelerated in the United Kingdom in October, largely driven by higher energy prices and mounting supply-chain disruptions, reaching the highest level since December 2011. The U.K. consumer price index rose 4.2% YoY in October following a 3.1% increase in September. The October rise was more than double the target of 2% set by Bank of England. Household energy costs were one of the biggest contributors to inflation;...

(15 November 2021) Amid the global semiconductor shortage, car manufacturers around the world have reduced production or even completely stopped car assembly lines. IHS Markit estimates that in January though September 2021, over 7 million light vehicle units were not produced due to the semiconductor shortage. In this dashboard, Knoema's team has put together monthly statistics on passenger car production in the largest car manufacturing countries — China, Japan, Germany, India, and the...

(12 November 2021) The U.S. labor market has made significant progress since the removal of pandemic-related restrictions. According to the latest labor market report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), in October 2021 unemployment decreased to 4.6% and the number of people employed was only 3% below the pre-pandemic figure. However, not all jobs have been bouncing back equally. BLS employment data shows uneven recovery of employment across industries. While in some industries...

(10 November 2021) A mismatch between natural gas demand and supply in Europe has pushed natural gas spot prices to record highs. In this dashboard we put together data on four key short-term indicators that will shape natural gas prices in Europe this winter: air temperature; wind speed in the North Sea; volume of natural gas in storage; and industrial production. Air temperature determines how much energy is needed to heat/cool down homes and buildings in winter/summer.Wind speed in the...

The latest data on inflation from the World Bank shows that global inflation continues to accelerate. In May 2022, the world consumer price index (CPI) growth accelerated to 8.1% year-over-year. The last time year-over-year global inflation approached 8% was in 2008, when the world economy was stepping in the Great Recession. Knoema's global inflation heat map, based on the World Bank data, reveals the spread of inflation to more and more countries each month. In Dec 2019, among 107...

(05 November 2021) Between Q2 2020 and Q1 2021, when the U.S. economy was struggling because of pandemic-related restrictions and high unemployment, an increase in government spending and tax cuts provided significant support to U.S. economic growth. However, after the fiscal stimulus programs ended in Q1 2021, the contribution of fiscal policy to U.S. GDP growth turned negative, according to the Hutchins Center Fiscal Impact Measure estimate. The Hutchins Center estimates that in Q2 and Q3...

(04 November 2021) As a part its 2021 International Debt Statistics Report, the World Bank has published data on the external debt of emerging and developing countries, broken down by creditors. This data not only reveals countries — the largest single creditors — but can also be used to estimate the financial power of particular creditors within a specific debtor economy. Detailed external debt data from the World Bank is now available from Knoema. The World Bank data shows that since the...

(02 November 2021) The COVID-19 pandemic, which has caused the deepest recession in the global economy since the end of the WWII, is far from over. In this dashboard, based on latest COVID data, we visualize key statistical facts and correlations on the pandemic to date. Global COVID-19 waves since the start of 2021 have had consistent periodicity — four months between peaks. Assuming the four-month pattern continues, the next peak in COVID cases and deaths can be expected at the end of...

(01 November 2021) According to the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), in Q3 2021 U.S. GDP growth decelerated, dropping to only 2% over the previous quarter at a seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR). Detailed National Income and Product Accounts data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics helps to explain why real GDP growth in July through September 2021 was less than a third of the growth rates in Q1 and Q2. Slowdown in Q3 real GDP growth was caused mostly by...

(29 October 2021) Amid worldwide efforts to achieve "net-zero" carbon emission targets, economic activities associated with intensive carbon emissions are losing attractiveness for investors. Forbes data on global corporations shows that between 2011 and 2021, the number of oil and gas companies among the 30 world's largest companies decreased from six to only one — Saudi Aramco, which went public in 2019. At the same time, the capitalization of ICT (information and communications technology)...

(28 October 2021) In the modern digital world, access to the internet is increasingly becoming a basic human need. A worldwide broadband pricing report from Cable.co.uk shows how much the price for internet access varies across countries. Some key takeaways: The world's cheapest fixed-line broadband is currently offered in Ukraine, with an average monthly cost of US$6.40 per month. Five of the ten countries with the cheapest internet were formerly part of the USSR: Ukraine, Russia,...

(25 October 2021) The Gini index is one of the traditional measures used to estimate inequality in income distribution at a country level. It shows how far the income distribution between different subsets of a population is from income equality. To estimate a Gini index, national statistical offices (NSOs) need to collect data on personal income for each percentile of population. In this dashboard, the Knoema team uses the same approach to estimate inequality of income distribution at a global...

(19 October 2021) In mid-October the Global Hunger Index released its annual report, which estimates progress in fighting hunger in more than one hundred emerging and developing economies. According to the 2021 Global Hunger Index report, the world will fail to achieve a low level of global hunger in the next decade. Here are key takeaways: The progress in fighting hunger made in recent years can be quickly wiped out by armed conflicts, climate change and the COVID pandemic. The global economy...

(14 October 2021) The mid-term prospects for the development of the global economy look promising — the International Monetary Fund projects that almost 6% global GDP growth in 2021 and almost 5% growth in 2022 will be followed with annual growth above 3% in 2023 through 2026. However, uncertainty around inflation pressure and the pandemic situation are considered major risks for global growth. Here are the key takeaways from the October 2021 edition of the IMF's World Economic Outlook (WEO)...

(13 October 2021) Low interest rates, economic stimulus and high uncertainty over the course of the pandemic boosted consumer demand for new homes as well as home prices around the world. To estimate a potential contribution of soaring home prices to overall inflation, we analyzed home price and housing rent data for 33 economies for which data was available in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). OECD housing data for 2010-2021 shows that a one percent increase in...

(07 October 2021) At the end of June of 2021, the U.S. government hit the public debt ceiling of $28.4 trillion. According to U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen's estimates, under the existing debt limit the U.S. government will have to stop paying on its obligations such as social security programs, salaries and interest payments on treasury securities on October 18. Prolonged debates and lack of consensus in the U.S. Congress on the debt limit led to a stock market decline through...

(October 6, 2021) The energy crisis in Europe is intensifying, in part because the long and cold 2020-2021 winter depleted the volume of natural gas available in gas storage capacities. The latest natural gas storage data from the Aggregated Gas Storage Inventory shows that only 75% of gas storage capacities were full as of October 4th, compared to an October average of over 90% for 2016-2020. The low level of gas reserves in Europe has already led to a six-fold increase in natural gas spot...

(04 October 2021) China's economy has quickly recovered from the coronavirus crisis and is expected to grow between 7% and 8% in 2021 due to recovery of global trade, expansionary monetary policy, and increase in government spending. However, the rapid growth of the economy not only creates income and jobs, but can also lead to a shortage of resources. Strong economic growth in China translated into high demand for electricity, 57% of which is generated by coal power plants. In January-August...

(29 September 2021) On Sept. 22, the U.S. Federal Reserve announced that it would probably start tightening monetary policy in 2022. Markets hardly noticed the announcement, though, likely because the Fed continues to inject $120 billion of new money into the economy each month. So far in 2021, the Fed has already purchased U.S. Treasury securities and mortgage-backed securities worth $1.1 trillion. Given that the expansionary monetary policy after the Great Recession resulted in high...

(27 September 2021) The latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows that inflation in the U.S. is slowing down. In August, the consumer price index (CPI) decelerated to a 0.3% month-over-month increase compared to 0.7% to 0.9% monthly increases in April through June. The highest inflation has been concentrated among only a small number of categories of consumer goods and services. Prices for used cars and rental cars jumped amid supply chain disruptions and strong demand....

(23 September 2021) Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has for years been the key economic indicator used for cross-country comparisons. The value of GDP shows how large a country's economy is, and per capita GDP is used to compare countries' productivity and technological development. However, emphasis on these directly measurable indicators often obscures qualitative characteristics of development that can significantly affect the estimates of a country's economic potential. With China becoming an...

(17 September 2021) Data from international organizations such as the U.N. and the International Monetary Fund shows that in the last five decades global economic growth decelerated by almost 50%—from an average 3.9% growth per year in the 1970s to an average 2.3% growth in the 2010s. Current trends in labor, capital, and productivity—the major drivers of economic growth—suggest deceleration will continue long term. Data from the U.N. shows that the global annual growth of population ages...

(09 September 2021) Inequality in the distribution of income is one of the most important measures of the quality of economic development, along with changes in the overall level of per capita income. However, national statistics offices typically devote much less time and resources to investigating income inequality indicators than traditional economic indicators such as GDP. As a result, official statistics on income inequality are scarce, and inconsistent across countries, making it...

(19 October 2021) Through June-September of 2021, consumer price index (CPI) inflation in the U.S. accelerated to 5.4% on a year-over-year basis, which was the highest monthly growth rate in the last 12 years. Not all consumer goods were affected by price increases equally. For example, used car and gasoline prices were up 40% year-over-year in July, while consumer coffee prices have only increased by 1% year-over-year. The price for New York traded Arabica beans increased to an average $2.03...

(27 September 2021) Reaching the decarbonization goals outlined in the Paris Agreement in order to create a sustainable future energy system will require huge investment by all major economies. This dashboard explores the energy transformation forecast through 2050 from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and uses data from IRENA and the International Energy Agency (IEA) to provide an overview of the current structure, amount, and sources of renewable energy (RE) investments. ...

(10 August 2021) "Climate change is irreversible." This was perhaps the most significant conclusion of the most recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The report, a product of the combined efforts of 234 scientists from 66 countries, projects that in the coming decades climate changes will increase in all regions of the globe, with increasing heat waves, longer warm seasons, and shorter cold seasons. Sea level will continue to rise, and the likelihood of...

(09 August, 2021) The inflow of immigrants and migrant workers is often perceived extremely negatively by the existing population of a region, due to expectations that immigrants may represent a threat to cultural values, security, and availability of jobs, not to mention the fact that working migrants and some immigrants often send the largest share of their income back to the country of origin, which can undermine the stability of balance of payments. Is the negative attitude toward the...

(05 August 2021) The US consumer price inflation (CPI) index is probably the most tracked economic indicator today. The main question: whether the current inflation wave has been driven by temporary factors (as the Federal Reserves hopes) or is something that will turn into a long-term threat to U.S. economic growth. Findings from the small business survey from the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) can shed light on the near-term future. According to the NFIB's small...

(05 August 2021) To support the economy and health systems during the coronavirus crisis, governments had to increase spending, financing the increase mostly with growing debt. However, buildup in government debt doesn't necessary lead to the deterioration of fiscal stability, at least not in the short term. Eurozone countries, which on average increased government debt by 14% of GDP during 2020, now pay even less to serve higher debts than they did before the pandemic began. In 2020,...

(30 July 2021) What drives economic growth? Economists give a variety of answers to this question, ranging from cheap labor or endowment with ample natural resources to institutional environment and the development of digital technologies. The answer policymakers choose determines economic policy, which ultimately affects how different sectors of the economy develop. Since the industrial revolution, development of the real sector (which includes agriculture, manufacturing, construction and...

(26 July 2021) According to the World Bank’s State and Trends of Carbon Pricing 2021, there are 64 carbon pricing schemes in operation around the world today, covering over 21% of global emissions and generating over $50 billion of revenue per year. Though the share of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions covered by carbon pricing initiatives is growing fast, with a threefold increase over the last decade, experts note that thus far less than 4% of global emissions are covered by a carbon...

(19 July 2021) As a part of the European Green Deal, the European Commission has presented a carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) for selected sectors aimed at addressing the risk of climate change by reducing GHG emissions in the European Union and globally. The current list of CBAM goods include five broad commodity groups — aluminum, cement, electricity, fertilizers, and iron and steel — but the list may be extended in the future. To ensure that the price of imports more accurately...

(15 July 2021) The dissolution of the USSR back in 1991 led to the emergence of 15 independent states, which then began a rapid transition from central planning to a market economy. Without getting into the still-ongoing debate about the collapse of the USSR and the need for this economic transition, let's take a look at the results of 30 years of reforms in the Former Soviet Union (FSU) countries by the numbers. We took 1990-2019 data for three indicators to estimate the impact of market...

(13 July 2021) In 1971, to prevent inflation-induced outflow of gold from the country, US President Richard Nixon ended the convertibility of US dollars to gold at a fixed exchange rate. This decision, which was followed by similar measures in other countries, ended the post-World War II period during which the value of national currencies remained unchanged relative to the value of gold. The decades of post-Gold Standard history show that none of major fiat currencies have been able to...

(08 July 2021) China’s outbreak of African swine fever back in 2018-2019 hurt domestic pig meat production and provided opportunities for meat* producers around the world to increase exports of pork and other meat to supplement China's diminished domestic supply. The US, the EU, and Brazil have benefited the most from the growing Chinese imports of meat, but some smaller meat exporters that had not traded meat to China before, like Russia and Belarus, also increased their meat exports. The...

(06 July 2021) Globalization — the reduction of barriers to international trade and cross border capital and labor flows — has been a major driver for the global economy in the past few decades. The rise of the global economic model has undeniably provided benefits, but the degree of success differs across countries. To measure how different countries have fared in the more economically open world, we compared the ratios of countries' per capita GDP to the US per capita GDP in 1990 and 2019....

(05 July 2021) At the beginning of July 2021, 130 countries and territories joined a plan, developed in negotiations coordinated by the OECD, to reform the international taxation system and ensure that multinational enterprises pay a fair share of tax wherever they operate. The plan is expected to be implemented starting in 2023. Taxing rights on more than $100 billion of profits are expected to be reallocated annually from multinational enterprises' home countries to the markets where they...

(2 July 2021) Though travel and tourism stocks recovered to a pre-crisis level by the end of 2020, financial statement data shows that the COVID-19 pandemic continues to have a strong negative impact on the revenues of companies in the tourism industry. In Q1 2021, sales of Booking Holdings Inc., Expedia Inc. and TripAdvisor Inc. were down 60-65% compared to the same quarter a year ago. This and other data on the pandemic points to a subdued and protracted recovery for the tourism sector. The...

(30 June 2021) While it’s true that major powers aren’t engaging in the kind of devastating large-scale wars that rocked the first half of the 20th century, data from the Institute for Economics and Peace shows that the state of global peace is deteriorating. According to the Institute's 2021 Global Peace Index report, between 2012 and 2021 the peace index score deteriorated in 87 countries (out of 158 for which 2012-2021 data is available), including the three major military powers: the US,...

(September 10, 2021) Oil prices demonstrated significant growth in 2021, reaching pre-COVID levels as a result of positive expectations about economic recovery. For the same reason, oil stocks also demonstrated strong growth this year, but not to the same extent; the financial results of a number of the world's top oil companies are still not where they were in the pre-COVID-19 period, and energy sector exchange-traded fund prices have yet to reach 2019 levels. A number of factors are...

(30 June 2021) According to 505 Economics, most sub-national regions of the United Kingdom — referred to as NUTS 2* regions — responded uniformly to the first lockdown in April 2020, with economies contracting by approximately 20%. A similar pattern could be seen at a more granular NUTS 3 level*. However, local economies (NUTS 3) do not appear to have returned to pre-COVID levels of economic growth. As opposed to Eurostat or national statistics offices who provide national GDP estimated on a...

(24 June 2020) While the worst economic expectations for 2020 did not materialize, the travel and tourism industry is not an object of envy with respect to the COVID-19 pandemic. A global lockdown in 2020 in the first wave of pandemic and long-term border closures following the upsurge in new COVID-19 outbreaks resulted in a 65% decline in world exports of travel services in 2020 compared to the previous year. Cross-country comparison based on the IMF's balance of payments data shows that the...

(Published: 23 June 2021. Updated: 29 July 2021) Since the beginning of the pandemic, vaccination has been seen by many experts as a key unknown in the post-COVID economic recovery puzzle. While countries' progress in COVID vaccinations can be tracked directly, cross-country comparisons of data on COVID-19 numbers and vaccination progress also make it possible to begin to examine how effective vaccination has been in preventing the spread of the disease and minimizing its consequences. In this...

(21 June 2021) Fast post-COVID recovery of consumer demand amid supply chain disruptions has resulted in rising inflation in most countries around the world. In many economies, consumer price inflation (CPI) has already exceeded monetary policy targets, but so far central banks are mostly ignoring the rising inflation on the grounds that the acceleration is caused by temporary factors. The reluctance of monetary authorities to combat rising inflation pressure raises a question of whether the...

(18 June 2021) Uneven post-covid recovery, supply shortages, and tens of trillions of dollars of economic stimulus have resulted in a price rally in commodity markets, including prices for industrial metals. The question that investors are asking today is how long the price rally will last. The short answer: We don't know. Instead of making predictions on prices, in this dashboard we have put together a set of indicators for your exploration and analysis. Several of these indicators hint at a...

(17 June 2021) With the US vaccination progress continuing and many anti-COVID restrictions easing, American's driving activity is recovering, and the increased mobility combined with stimulus checks, pent-up demand, and high credit availability have quickly translated into an increase in car sales. Many Americans wanting to buy a car are stumbled on car shortages at auto dealerships, though. This growing demand and lack of supply have already translated into sharp price growth in the used car...

(16 June 2021) Africa is the only continent with a fast-growing population, and the only one where the population is expected to continue growing beyond 2050. According to the UN's 2019 World Population Prospects report, in the next 80 years population of Africa will increase by more than three times — from 1.3 billion people in 2020 to 4.2 billion in 2100. In 19 African countries, the population is on track to double in the next 30 years, and in 28 African countries the population is...

(15 June 2021) On June 16, the meeting of the presidents of the United States and Russia will take place in Geneva. This will be the first in-person meeting of the US and Russian presidents since 2019. It can be said without exaggeration that the results of the US-Russia summit will determine the state of the global order for many years ahead (at least till 2024, the year of the next presidential elections in the United States and Russia). So the main question about the summit is, Will the...

(14 June 2021) According to the latest report by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), due to the USA and Russia dismantling retired warheads, the global nuclear warheads inventory decreased by 320 units between Jan. 1, 2020 and Jan. 1, 2021, continuing an overall decline in global stock. And this is a good news. The bad news is that at the beginning of 2021 the number of deployed warheads (warheads placed on missiles or located on bases with operational forces) increased...

(10 June 2021) While 30% of the world's largest corporations have already made a commitment to reducing carbon emissions, there are other companies whose economic activity is inextricably linked to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and for whom reducing their carbon footprint is barely feasible — the so-called "carbon majors." In its 2020 Carbon Majors report, the Climate Accountability Institute estimates that between 1965 and 2018, 493 billion tons of greenhouse gases (in CO2 equivalent), or 35%...

(09 June 2021) Global mass production of synthetic polymers started in the 1950s, and the first scientific papers warning about negative impacts of plastic waste on ocean ecosystems appeared in early 1970s. More than 50 years after plastic pollution was recognized as a problem affecting the marine environment, ocean health, food safety, human health, and coastal tourism, we still don't know how much plastic has accumulated in the ocean or how much new plastic ends up in the ocean each year. ...

(28 June 2021) Orbisa estimates that as of April 2021, the global securities lending market is at $26.4 trillion in lendable assets and $2.3 trillion in securities currently on loan. Securities lending allows investors to short-sell and provides investment funds with additional income in the form of fees they charge for lending securities. The Americas equity market accounts for the largest part (46%) of the lendable assets, while government debt represents the largest share (49%) of assets...

(11 June 2021) According to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report, U.S. consumer price index (CPI) rose sharply agin in May to 5.0% year-over-year, going well above the Federal Reserve target of 2%. Based on data for the first eleven days of June, Knoema's U.S. CPI Inflation Index — which combines data from four high-frequency indicators — points that consumer price inflation is expected to ease in June 2021 on a year-over-year basis. Note: Knoema's U.S. CPI Inflation Index is...

(16 August 2021) In order to limit the rise in global temperatures to the targets established in the Paris agreement, economies need to significantly reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. The most developed countries, as well as the biggest emitters, are announcing targets designed to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 and even earlier. Achieving these goals, however, will require significantly restructuring of the energy sector to use carbon-free (renewable and nuclear) energy sources and...

(26 May 2021) From the time that the COVID-19 pandemic hit the global economy in the first quarter of 2020, progress in vaccination and vaccine efficacy have been cited by international organizations and research institutions as a key factor for economic recovery. The first COVID-19 vaccination programs launched in December 2020, and by the end of March 2021 countries like Israel, the UK, and the US had already made considerable vaccination progress. An analysis of the latest available data...

(1 June 2021) In May, lumber futures reached a high of 408% growth year-over-year. Price indices (both consumer and producer) for lumber and wood have also been on an upward trend since summer 2020 in some of the top exporting countries, like Canada, the USA, and Brazil, as well as in other countries like Norway. Lumber price growth was initially caused by fundamental factors such as supply and demand mismatch. It was later reignited by the inflow of speculators into the market. Demand for...

(24 May 2021) On May 12, 2021, Elon Musk announced that Tesla had suspended accepting payments in bitcoin for its cars because of environmental concerns related to bitcoin mining. Since the first block of bitcoin was mined back in 2009, the consumption of electricity energy need to mine bitcoins has increased to estimated 150 TWh per year — which exceeds the electricity consumption of such countries as the Netherlands, the Philippines, and Kazakstan. An extrapolation from bitcoin mining...

(19 May 2021) The defense industry is one of the few that have not taken a hit in the economic aftermath of COVID-19. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, in 2020 most countries increased their military spending from the previous year or kept it unchanged. Only 36 out of 148 countries analyzed by the Institute have cut military spending by more than 5% year-over-year. In 2020, world military expenditure increased to $2 trillion, which is equivalent to 2.3% of...

(November 2022) According to the latest Artificial Intelligence (AI) Index Report by Stanford University, in 2021 China continued to lead the world in the number of AI journal, conference, and repository publications—63.2% higher than the United States with all three publication types combined. Another fact from the UN: due to rapid economic expansion and information and communications technology (ICT) investment growth in recent decades, China's ICT sector today is almost as big as the ICT...

(25 May 2021) The renewable energy sector directly or indirectly employed nearly 11.5 million people in 2019, reflecting a 4% increase over the previous year, according to data from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). Renewable energy (RE) employment has risen 34% percent since 2013, adding almost 3 million new jobs to the global economy. The solar photovoltaic (PV), bioenergy, hydropower, and wind power industries have become the biggest employers of the renewable energy sector....

(21 April 2021) While some developed countries like the US and UK have already vaccinated about 40% of their populations and, taking into account the share of the population already infected, are likely close to herd immunity, some developing countries have been hit hard by the latest upsurge in COVID-19 infections. In the last seven days, the number of new COVID cases globally has exceeded the weekly total from the previous peak, in January 2021. The upsurge in India has contributed the most...

(24 August 2021) As of July 2021, global container freight rates, as measured by the Freightos Baltic Index (FBX), increased fourfold over the last year due to the faster than expected recovery of consumer demand, container shortages, and the shift of consumer spending from services to goods. The global container throughput index by the Institute of Shipping Economics and Logistics, which monitors activity in 82 international ports covering more than 60% of world container handling, increased...

(27 July 2021) A decade ago, when renewable technologies were not widespread and were less efficient, the cost of energy from renewable sources, especially solar, was too high to be competitive with fossil fuels. After ten years of development, though, renewable power generation costs have fallen dramatically, driven by steadily improving technologies, economies of scale, and other factors. The cost reduction has been the highest for wind and solar technologies, which are nearing the lower...

(9 April 2021) As the coronavirus forced shutdowns, the number of drug deaths in the US started spiking. The latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicates that in 2020* the rate over overdose deaths in the US rose 25% over the previous year. Isolation, stress, loss of income and lower availability of support and health services during COVID-19 health crisis are thought to be the key reasons for growing number of drug overdose deaths. Drug overdoses killed an...

(6 April 2021) With the United States' reentry into the Paris Agreement and the $2 trillion American Rescue Plan that aims to reduce the carbon intensity of the US economy, the global energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables is gaining momentum. While every nation stands to benefit from prevention of excessive global warming, growth of the green economy can also mean economic losses for many fossil fuel exporters. According to data from the World Bank, today there are more than fifty...

(5 April 2021) In 2020, for the first time since Adobe began tracking digital purchasing power, US consumers were getting less for their online dollars than they had the previous year. The rise in consumer demand and online sales in the second half of 2020, stimulated by US government spending, easing of monetary policy, and pent-up demand from the early months of the pandemic, was met with supply chain disruptions and rising prices.The online dollar continued to weaken in the opening months...

(1 April 2021) McDonald's and Starbucks are two of the most popular fast-food chains in the United States. California and Texas are the largest markets for both franchises in terms of the number of stores. This is not surprising, since these are the two most populous US states. But looking at the actual number of visits to these two brands — as tracked by Tamoco in August and September last year— gives slightly a different picture: California was in 12th place among all states by the number of...

(29 March 2021) Poor weather conditions and lack of visibility resulted in a giant 200,000-ton container ship, Ever Given, blocking the Suez Canal for almost a week, from Tuesday, March 23 to Monday, March 29. Since the Suez Canal is the most important trade route connecting Europe and North America in the North and the Middle East and Asia in the South, the blockage halted a significant proportion of global trade until the ship's eventual release early this morning. The annual cargo shipped...

(January 2023) The rollback of Trump's hardline immigration policies by the Biden-Harris administration and struggling Latin American economies are pushing hundreds of thousands of migrants to cross the US-Mexico border in hope of a better life. According to the latest data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the number of migrant encounters across the U.S. southern border for December 2022 reached a record high of 251,487. Compared to December 2021 number of migrant encounters...

(24 March 2021) According to WIPO's 2020 Global Innovation Index report, Switzerland, Sweden, the US, the UK, and the Netherlands continue to lead the innovation ranking in 2020, with a second Asian economy—the Republic of Korea—joining the top 10 for the first time (Singapore is number 8). High-income countries held all of the top 10 spots again this year; however, China has retained its place among the 15 most innovative economies, ahead of some countries from the high-income group such as...

(27 May 2021) US consumer price jumped 4.2% in the 12-month period ending April 30, 2021, up from 2.6% 12-month growth in March. The increase marked the biggest jump since September 2008. Who will be the winners and losers if inflation of 4%–5% persists? To explore this question, we analyzed historical data on inflation alongside stock market performance for different sectors. We took the 22-year history of SPDR ETF* returns and compared this data with US consumer price index (CPI) inflation...

(15 April 2021) Since 2018, when US states were given the power to legalize sports betting, the annual revenue of the sports betting industry has increased by five times — from $0.3 billion in 2018 to $1.5 billion in 2020 according to data from SportsHandle. The COVID-19 pandemic undermined revenue growth in early 2020, but the industry had already recovered by September, largely due to the adoption of online betting. As of today, 20 US states have already launched online or retail legal...

(20 March 2021) The pace of COVID-19 vaccine distribution is the main unknown in today's macroeconomic forecasts. In a scenario of faster and more effective worldwide vaccination, the global economy is expected to recover to pre-crisis levels sometime in 2021. Delays in vaccination programs, however, could contribute to the persistence of economic constraints in some countries and sectors, slowing the recovery of the world economy overall. Using data on population, COVID-19 cases, and...

(30 April 2021) According to the average team value estimates by Forbes, the valuation of sport teams in the "big three" major leagues — the NFL, MLB, and NBA — increased 5% in 2020, despite the attendance bans on many live sporting events and economic disruption caused by COVID-19. Over the last decade, the valuation of the three major leagues has increased by almost four times, outperforming the returns on the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average stock indices by 25% and 42%,...

(17 March 2020) By the time a commercial product is launched on the market, it has already been patented for several years. Since innovative companies are more successful in the market, patent data can be a key indicator of innovation activity and therefore of market performance. According to IPR Strategies, patent shares perform better than an index. Analyses of equal-weighted MSCI World Index shares overall compared with Patent shares (the top 30%, by patent leverage, of MSCI World Index...

Climate change is recognized as a significant issue for people's lives and economic well-being worldwide. Since greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are associated with climate change, many countries have been making efforts to regulate and limit them. Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, countries pledged to advance climate change mitigation by committing to national GHG reduction targets. In 2015, the countries submitted their first national strategies, known as Nationally Determined Contributions or...

(15 March 2021) At the very beginning of 2020, the novel coronavirus infection hit the world. Metabiota’s early warning system, however, had already detected the first signs of COVID-19 in late 2019. By early January, Metabiota’s team of digital surveillance experts and epidemiologists were collecting, cleaning, and structuring data on suspected, probable, and confirmed cases and deaths from dozens of different sources into a composite, best-in-class dataset. In a few months, the COVID-19...

(1 March 2020) The recent rise in global food prices poses a direct threat to many countries and millions of households around the world. In its recent article on the subject Bloomberg named five such "hotspots" — Russia, India, Brazil, Turkey, and Nigeria. According to Bloomberg, the acceleration of food price inflation in these countries has the potential not only to exacerbate food insecurity for families but to transfer to social protests. Looking deeper at the most recent data on food...

(3 March 2021) COVID-19 prompted consumers to change their buying habits in 2020, shifting towards more online purchases. E-commerce lost some momentum by the end of the year, with online holiday spending declining on a seasonally-adjusted basis. However, data provided by Viscacha, showcasing holiday spending at Target, the eighth-largest retailer in the United States, demonstrates that online sales still outperformed in-store sales during the holiday season. The Viscacha data also shows a...

(22 February 2021) During the last five months, the price of Bitcoin increased more than five times - from $10,000 to over $50,000 while the global cryptocurrency market capitalization topped $1.7 trillion. When it comes to traditional assets, such a rapid rise in the value of an asset typically indicates the emergence of a financial bubble. But, what about cryptocurrencies? Against the tsunami of cryptocurrencies' market capitalization increase, financial bubbles of the past look like small...

(12 February 2020) Tesla by far and away leads in sales of electric vehicles globally and now not only has company CEO Elon Musk thrown down for a 40x increase in annual production but in doing so could escalate natural resource and geopolitical pressures. Electric vehicles (EVs) experienced record sales growth in the second half of 2020, and Musk is perfectly poised to use that momentum to scale towards his production goal of 20 million EVs per year by 2030. Aggressive production plans from...

(11 February 2021; data updated 22 June 2021) January marked a critical point in the roll-out of COVID-19 vaccinations globally. Kicked off in the United Kingdom in late 2020 with a fully trialed and tested vaccine, Canada, Bahrain, and Mexico and followed soon after. Although Russia and China have been inoculating their citizens with several different vaccines since August 2020, the vaccines are still undergoing late-stage trials. As of January 2021, the United States, China, and the United...

(9 February 2021) In 2020, retail-investor representation in the stock market surged by 4.7% to a record 19.6%. Spurred by zero-commission trading and COVID tailwinds, this booming segment of stock market traders has reshaped market behavior. As a result, forums for financial discussion and inspiration have exploded in growth as well. WallStreetBets (r/WSB) is one of the most popular among these forums, with over 1.65 million followers as of January 15, 2020. To investigate the relationship...

(8 February 2021) Scientists at Cambridge university published research last month linking climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic, but it may not be what you think. Early in the pandemic, speculation and initial research suggested a potential relationship between seasonal weather conditions and the spread of COVID-19. What the researchers at Cambridge have found is a link between shifts in global bat diversity, climate change, and the evolution or transmission of the two SARS coronaviruses,...

(3 February 2021) The competitiveness of Eastern European and some African countries may be underestimated while that of the world's top economies, like the United States and Singapore, overestimated. Wonder why? We'll give you a clue: sustainability. The Global Sustainable Competitiveness Index (GSCI) by SolAbility* is one of multiple measures available today to estimate the competitiveness of countries. Others include the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) by the World Economic Forum (WEF)...

(02 February 2021) Based on the original paper by Dr. David L. Blond, Principle Researcher and President, QuERI-International. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of Knoema Holdings and its Executive Board. In November 2020, US voters went to the ballot box and sent a Democrat back into the White House to stare down a federal deficit that grew under President Trump from $19 trillion in January 2016 to more than $27 trillion the day that Joe...

(20 February 2021) Despite slack in recent economic indicators, stock market indices are showing growth and breaking records. For example, the index of companies with the largest capitalization, S&P 500, and the smallest, Russell 2000, have both achieved before-corona-crisis values for about half a year in 2020. Following the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, these two indices required a few years to achieve similar results. This growth may be attributed to the infusion of money in the...

(21 January 2021) In this dashboard we show an example of risk analysis enabled through the surfacing of events that can negatively impact asset valuation and highlights the sectors, regions, industries and stocks that are most impacted by that event. Investors can then further research the stock to decide whether to decrease their exposure to the asset or exit altogether.

(20 January 2020) One of the most sensitive economic effects of COVID is the reality that millions have lost their jobs. And, contrary to economic crises of the past that tended to narrow the gap between the rich and the poor, the corona-crisis has only widened that gap, a point US President Biden featured in his inaugural address today, "... Folks, this is a time of testing. We face an attack on our democracy and on truth, a raging virus, growing inequity, the sting of systemic racism, a...

(18 January 2021) On March 11th, 2020, the World Health Organization officially labeled the outbreak of the novel coronavirus a pandemic. In response, governments across the globe issued a variety of edicts aimed at attenuating the spread of the disease. However, as pragmatic as national quarantines may be, they nevertheless impose substantial economic consequences. App download statistics provide some intriguing insights into the ramifications of such measures. During an era of social...

(15 January 2021) Based on the original paper by Dr. David L. Blond, Principle Researcher and President, QuERI-International. In a world where the policy responses to COVID-19 vary from indifference to economic shut-ins for weeks and months at a time, the result is an economic reality that feels akin to wartime disruption. The nature of the COVID-19 disruption is utterly unique. Some sectors of the economy are closed down or severely restricted while others are left to work as they see fit....

(13 January 2020) Based on the original paper by Dr. David L. Blond, Principle Researcher and President, QuERI-International. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of Knoema Holdings and its Executive Board. The global economic trajectory once COVID-19 vaccines are widely available and the pandemic ends appears much less promising for hundreds of millions of people than was true of the post-World War II recovery even despite the...

(20 February 2021) The price of Bitcoin surged to more than $55,000 this week for the first time in history as large firms such as Tesla, PayPal, Mastercard, and BNY Mellon as well as major investment banks including JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley showed support for cryptocurrencies. With increased demand from institutional investors and corporates instead of retail investors, Bitcoin's perception may be shifting to that of a more stable asset than it was a couple of years ago. On...

As 2020 comes to a close, take a look at the 10 most popular Data Driven insights of 2020. Enjoy the review!

(15 January 2021) Rising global food prices, low local and global oil prices, and the high unemployment rate in Nigeria where 40% of the population already lives below the poverty line fueled record-high incidents of political and social unrest in 2020. While October was by far the most conflict-prone month, the year clocked in more than 1.5 times the number of conflicts recorded in 2019. And, while the world outside Nigeria may speculate automatically that Boko Haram is to blame, the terrorist...

(22 December 2020) Eliminating global poverty can sound like an impossibility for some perfect world akin to a wish for world peace, but millions globally face this as a matter of daily survival. Now, COVID-19 and market conditions that are driving food price inflation have spilled over as direct threats to food security and decades of progress to reduce poverty. The FAO Global Food Price Index reached a 6-year high during the September-November period, propelled by increasing prices of...

(18 December 2020) Almost 15,000 bank branch offices across the United States closed between 2010 and 2020, according to data from the Federal Insurance Deposit Corporation. Given the rise of digital banking and surge in fintech services over that same period it would be reasonable to suppose that the digital revolution has been a primary driver behind the restructuring of the banking industry. Nevertheless, FDIC data shows that digital banking is likely more of a means of adaptation to hyper...

(10 December 2020) Texas is the leader in refinery LPG production in the United States. Learn about the facilities behind this key statistic and more about the Texas LPG landscape with the interactive visualizations below. This data sample from Sulpetro has been collected from Federal and State agencies in addition to oil & gas think-tanks, corporate financials, and other paid-proprietary sources to offer comprehensive insight into the Texas NGL industry.

(14 December 2020) Back in 2018, with an eye toward protecting the domestic market from imports, improving the US trade balance, and creating jobs in manufacturing, US President Trump engaged in a so called 'trade war' with China, the country with the largest trade surplus with the United States, although it arguably originated with a much broader list of targets given that steel and aluminum were at the center of the new tariff rates. Nearly three years, one global health pandemic, and a...

(07 July 2021) According to Knoema's Alternative Data US Economic Activity Composite Index—which combines information from the six alternative data indicators displayed below along with the S&P 500 Index—the US recovery stalled in May 2021, not long after $1,400 stimulus checks had been delivered to eligible adults under the third round of federal stimulus aid. As of late June 2021, US economic activity remained about 5 percent lower than it had been in early March of 2021. Credit card...

(8 December 2020) Stock prices of COVID-19 vaccine developers have remained strong, with some exceptional outliers, as the world gets closer to the release of a vaccine against the virus. Fast becoming household names, Moderna, Novavax, Cansino, and Bharat, among other pharma companies, have demonstrated strong growth compared to December 2019 growing in the range of 260-2,100 percent compared to general S&P growth of 18%. So, where are we at in the vaccine race? As of December 8, 13...

(9 December 2020) Governments across the world have introduced economic, movement, and social restrictions to combat the spread of COVID-19. While the efficacy of these measures is still an open question, as the number of cases and deaths worldwide continues to grow, the economic losses caused by anti-COVID measures are evident. In addition to the economic consequences, societies globally are dealing with the curtailment of civil rights and economic freedoms to further undercut prosperity, the...

(10 December 2020) In September, Iceland, Norway, and Denmark had the highest average room prices on Airbnb among European countries, according to Yuvoh analytics. These three countries also had relatively low numbers of active COVID-19 cases per million population as of September and saw significant improvements in domestic tourist arrivals compared to the previous year. Germany, Italy, and Spain outperformed the pricier Airbnb locations in terms of the total number of domestic tourists,...

As the coronacrisis reached Russia this spring, ordinary citizens and business turned to cash to guard against the uncertainties of 2020. By early October, an estimated 12.1 trillion rubles were in circulation. While cash holdings have been on the rise for the better part of the last decade in Russia, the growth rate of cash holdings outside the banking system (a.k.a. M0) quadrupled between March (7.1%) and October (28.3%). The growth in cash holdings during the April-June period was largely...

(5 November 2020) Restrictions on many economic activities, especially those requiring in-person engagement, due to the COVID-19 pandemic coupled with extremely low interest rates and multi trillion stimulus provided by US Government and Federal Reserve resulted in unprecedented growth of tech stocks in recent months. Stock prices of Amazon, Facebook, and Apple are all outperforming the market by 10s of percentage points. Investors are treating tech giants as a safe haven through the current...

(5 November 2020) The Chinese seem to be more optimistic about their financial situation and economic prospects than Americans even though they have borne similar income losses as a result of COVID-19, according to the High-Frequency Economic Datastream survey by RIWI. About half of Chinese respondents surveyed by RIWI over the third quarter expected their financial situation and the economy to improve over the next six months as compared to 40 percent in the United States. At the same time,...

(2 November 2020) Contrary to reasoned arguments of those who believe that the peak of oil demand is still far ahead even as the likes of bp expect we'll never again return to pre-COVID global oil demand levels, the US stock market has already chosen the green path. For the first time ever, the market value of a primary producer of renewable energy has surpassed that of oil majors. On October 7, 2020, the market value of the world's largest producer of wind and solar energy—Nextera...

We can all likely agree that the COVID-19 pandemic has heavily contributed to the acute uncertainty gripping the world in 2020. In the United States, a variety of other events took place in 2020 to further elevate the average American's concern about the future, divisive presidential elections and multiple months of historic, nationwide protests among them. The data suggests that for some Americans this uncertainty may have translated into a very specific action: application for the purchase of...

(30 October 2020) The US trade gap in goods widened to a record $84 billion in August pointing to twin truths: strong recovery of the US economy and the failure of President Trump to achieve one of his presidency's main goals of reducing the US trade deficit. The Fed's $2.9 trillion in total stimulus from March through May and lower interest rates prompted households to spend instead of save and businesses to resume investing as indicated by short-term indicators, such as retail sales and...

(20 October 2020) Despite unprecedented government stimulus packages in the wake of COVID-19, the latest data shows that consumer demand remains subdued and is unlikely to return to pre-crisis levels ahead of the winter holiday season. "Consumers are taking advantage of a variety of offerings from retailers this holiday season including earlier sales promotions and shipping options,” Prosper Executive Vice President of Strategy Phil Rist said. “Consumers are focusing on making the holidays...

Check out US corporate dividends forecasts in this interactive dashboard from our partner Woodseer. View sample forecast data and comparisons across the 30 companies of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. We’ve paired the Woodseer dividends with stock indices to help you put this data into context.

(8 April 2021) Amid COVID-19 vaccination progress and new stimulus measures from the US government, IMF economists are predicting a shining near-term future for the global economy. Here are the key takeaways from the April 2021 edition of the IMF's World Economic Outlook (WEO) report: The IMF now estimates 2020 growth to have been -3.3 percent, a 1.1 percentage point upward revision from its October 2020 projection. The outlook for 2021 improved by 0.8 percentage points, to 6%, based on...

(14 October 2020) The corona-crisis is different from past economic recessions in that it has touched all economies without exception. But if we look from economy to economy, we quickly observe that the economic consequences of the corona-crisis are far from uniform. To understand why, for example, GDP in Korea dropped just 2.8% YoY in Q2 2020 while India experienced a 23.9% YoY contraction, we collected key macroeconomic indicators for Q2 2020 for the world's 15 largest economies. At first...

Current data on US crime rates is difficult to come by. Most data from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is only available through 2018, a few exceptions such as offense clearance statistics go through 2019, and for 2020, the year of COVID, you have to either reference preliminary figures published in September that cover January-July or bounce from metro area to metro area to find the statistics you're looking for. So, we did both! COVID-19's reach is well beyond health, hitting...

(9 October 2020) During periods of high volatility (hello, coronavirus!) governments, investors, businesses, and households alike typically seek out safe assets to protect their savings. In the absence of a magical currency impervious to the volatility of recessions, the search for stability usual returns to none other than the modern day gold standard. For governments, especially in the period since the Great Recession, this translates into more aggressive and intentional accumulation of gold...

(5 October 2020) By late March 2020, educational institutions globally were partially or completely shut down to help contain the spread of COVID-19. Combined with similar approaches from businesses in addition to social distancing, masks and other measures, only temporary containment of the virus was achieved for many countries, COVID case counts resurging for many as restrictions were lifted. Today, hopes for summer and fall 'business as usual' for the world's students have been left...

(2 October 2020) After WWII the world entered an era of unprecedented economic growth. Three simple facts capture the magnitude of this change. Between 1960 and 2019 (1) the global economy increased more that seven times; (2) average per capita income and personal consumption increased almost 3 times; and (3) the world population climbed by more than 2.5 percent from 3 billion to 7.7 billion. But while we continue to measure the success of humanity in economic terms, some important components...

(29 October 2020) If you've been following the latest forecasts from The Economist and Columbia University, Donald Trump has a small probability (3.5%) of winning the electoral college to be re-elected in November. The model is designed to predict the chances of winning the electoral-college on election day, as Trump did in 2016 even though he failed to win the popular vote, and currently gives Joe Biden an 96 percent probability of defeating Donald Trump and better than 19 in 20 chances of...

(23 September 2020) Sir Thomas More introduced the concept of basic income* in Utopia back in 1516. It's a simple concept: Eliminate poverty by guaranteeing a basic level of income. The New Jersey Income Maintenance Experiment (1968-1972) was the first basic income experiment and has since been followed by more than 40 experiments across 14 countries, including 16 ongoing, and another 5 experiments planned for 2020 or later. From an experimental perspective with small groups of participants (as...

(18 September 2020) Today US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, known as a champion of gender equality, passed away, sending thousands to the US Supreme Court grounds to mourn her loss. The timing of her passing is noteworthy as it overlapped with the internationally recognized 'Equal Pay Day', a concept near and dear to the cause that Justice Ginsburg supported throughout her life despite wavering profess since the days of the US Equal Pay Act of 1963. Caregiving and other unpaid...

(11 September 2020) China, Japan, and South Korea may be exemplars for the disparate but generally successful tactics taken to prevent the massive spread of COVID-19, but only China managed a return to positive economic growth as of Q2 2020. Expanding our scope to Asia Pacific, the cost of pandemic containment measured represented by the loss of percentage points of GDP per 1 COVID-19 death per million population is higher than any other world region, representing two thirds of those countries...

(4 September 2020) Whether you're talking about trade school, associates, or other higher education degrees, the more educated the members of a society, the better. And, yet, President Trump could have cause to not only disagree but to be concerned. The failure of pollsters to adequately account for educational attainment leading into the 2016 US presidential election contributed to a bias in favor of a win for the Democratic Party. 2016 US election exit polls showed that 34 percent of...

(27 August 2020) How would you define an enemy of your country? Would it surprise you to learn that in a recent survey 20 percent of US adults said they consider Mexico to be an enemy of the United States? Perhaps more pressing, come November 3, when the votes are tallied, will it be China, Russia, North Korea, Iran or others in the crosshairs for US foreign policy and maybe even accusations of election interference? Russia and North Korea are likely targets of a challenger foreign policy...

(25 August 2020) With the US presidential election less than three months away, an interesting finding published back in 1967 by stock market research Yale Hirsh in the Stock Trader's Almanac presents a distracting tidbit for data lovers and market watchers alike: stock market performance is interconnected with electoral cycles. Hirsh's "Presidential Election Cycle Theory" decomposes US presidential terms by year to show that year three of a US president's 4-year term is usually the strongest...

(21 August 2020) Did you know that the stock market has correctly predicted who would win each of the US presidential elections since 1984? More specifically, the performance of the S&P 500 Index on the eve of the election compared to its value three months prior has aligned 100% with each election outcome for the last nine presidential elections. Here's the rub - while the S&P 500 Index predicts the election results nobody can predict the index. The current S&P 500 Index...

COVID economy or not, US defense expenditures are on the rise in 2020 and approaching inflation-adjusted levels equivalent to the WWII period. In 2020, US spending on defense will be equivalent to approximately 3.8 percent of GDP, which while an increase from 2018 is actually 0.1 percentage points less than the average over the last two decades and an arguably moderate economic burden, at least in pre-COVID times. US defense spending is also considerably greater than any other country in the...

(10 August 2020) Right after the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington D.C. took control over direct reporting of COVID-19 statistics, the second wave of the pandemic started to fade in the United States. Whether the altered trend reflects changes in methodology behind COVID-19 data, natural abatement, or renewal of anti-covid restrictions in many US states, one fact is beyond a doubt: republican strong-hold states experienced a significantly stronger second wave of...

(7 August 2020) The impact of the global coronavirus pandemic has been widespread and multifaceted. For American small businesses, shutdowns and COVID-driven changes in consumer spending habits have had dramatic and lingering effects across multiple industries. One of the first areas to be particularly hurt by the coronavirus was restaurants and bars. Chinese food restaurants showed significant downturns in revenue early on, well before other types of restaurants, and well before...

(4 August 2020) We've all seen the latest polls, with Biden sustaining a strong 8-10 percent lead over Trump. Now, the latest Economist/YouGov poll magnifies Biden's cross-cutting lead, showing a double-digit advantage among women, ... young voters (under 35), ... college graduates, ... non-white Americans... Who remains? White men over the age of 65 now represent Trump's last remaining stronghold, but even within this demographic, the margin is less than 10 percent and facing challenges. ...

(28 July 2020) The US general election is scheduled for November 3, 2020. It will result the election of either former Vice President Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States or the re-election of incumbent US President Donald Trump for a second term. Polling data from RealClearPolitics shows that during July President Trump reduced the polling gap to strengthen his position against Biden. According to the latest RealClearPolitics poll, 49.6% of respondents support Biden,...

Among the most pressing issues for the 2020 US presidential elections are healthcare, terrorism, gun policy, education, and the economy, according to an early 2020 Gallup survey. Around one third of American adults cited candidates' positions on these issues as 'extremely important' to their vote for president come November. While COVID and the health, employment, and general economic and social crises that have ensued this year have almost certainly changed the weight and perspective people...

(16 July 2020) In June 2020, the number of new COVID-19 cases reported daily in the United States was on the rise, surpassing previous peak figures in many states and triggering an increasing death toll in at least 10 states. Looking ahead to the November US presidential election, to avoid the possible COVID-19 health risks associated with large crowds at polling places, many states are preparing for an increase in vote-by-mail, leading us to wonder whether the US president elected in 2020 will...

Tech startups are facing vastly different realities during the COVID-19 pandemic depending on the industries that they target. Consider the difference in the adoption rate for delivery apps and platforms for remote work compared to those targeting the transportation and travel industries, which have suffered seriously due to lockdowns globally. But even those startups in relatively isolated industries with stable business models may be facing financial constraints or need to radically and...

The reported number of new cases of COVID-19 has a major drawback: it cannot capture the current dynamics of the outbreak, i.e. answer if the outbreak is increasing or decreasing at any given moment in any given place. The delay between time of infection and positive case reported is the culprit in these case statistics. EpiForecasts, a team that is based at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who focuses on real-time modeling and forecasting of infectious disease outbreaks,...

(Updated: 18 Jan 2021; Originally published: 15 June 2020) January 2021 consumer survey data from Prosper Insight and Analytics demonstrates that US consumers are getting used to their new lifestyles and have shifted from wishing for the pandemic to go away to just dealing with the “new normal”. Consumer Spending. US consumer confidence took a big hit in January as consumers looked ahead to the next few months. The US economy is sending so many mixed signals right now that you might be better...

(22 June 2020) By early June, governments worldwide were collectively rolling back more COVID-19 pandemic response measures than they were issuing new measures. The question is, even with source like the the Assessment Capacities Project (ACAPS) tracking these measures, how much do we really know about the efficacy of the measures? We decided to compare COVID-19 case statistics and COVID-19 measures data and assume that more rapid reductions of daily deaths and/or decreasing ratios of new...

Mortality figures are not only returning to normal levels in Europe, but they are remarkably consistent with reported COVID-19 deaths. According to the latest weekly mortality statistics from EuroMOMO, as of the week of May 11, the total number of deaths in 20 European countries* was 51,033, which is in line with the highest end of the normal range and only slightly above the normal baseline level (49,913 deaths) for this week. Between February and May, deaths exceeded the baseline level by...

(26 May 2020) COVID-19 response in any country with a population size and dispersion like the United States, China, and Russia, brings inherent challenges that are only aggravated by the digital divide, logistical realities, and social attitudes and biases. AllClear, a New York City non-profit dedicated to empowering communities with technology and data to overcome COVID-19 and get back on track, gives us an opportuntity for the first step in a data-based look into how the number of testing...

While researchers are working toward an answer to COVID-19, it seems that the average person has had enough on the topic. The declining breadth of search queries* people use to find COVID-related information on Bing points to waning interest, at least in the United States. During the week of March 16, 306,000 unique queries (explicit and implicit) related to Coronavirus or COVID-19 were recorded. By the end of April, that figure dropped to only around 36,000. More general 'coronavirus'...

The real estate world has taken its share of the burden of the COVID-19 pandemic, as people empty out of offices, hotels, and malls and work from their homes. Economic activity in construction and real-estate contracted sharply this year under the weight of the pandemic, with the largest decline yet recorded in April, according to the US Federal Reserve. LinkUp jobs data suggests the situation in the real estate industry will remain tough in June. In the three months between February and...

Beijing's stimulus measures and COVID-19 containment measures have helped the country's leading car production provinces—Shaanxi, Zhejiang, Shandong, Jilin, and Liaoning—to increase production in April by more than 20 percent compared to the same month one year ago. Car sales increased to 1.9 million units, which while representing zero growth from on year ago, it also marks the first time since July 2018 that car sales did not decline and brings sales within reach of the 2.2 million unit...

COVID-19 death rates across the US demonstrate an interesting truth, with yet to be fully understood cause(s) as to how the pandemic has spread in the US: race matters. The black or African American population constitutes about 9% of the population* of Kansas and roughly 33% of the state’s COVID-19 deathsIn Arizona, American Indians represent only 2% of the population and almost 25% of those who died from COVID-19 in the state. Unfortunately for the US (and the world) in terms of gaining...

(20 May 2020) In recent weeks, drivers have returned to the roads across the United States as states have increasingly relaxed social distancing guidelines. As of the week starting May 11, driving activity measured as the number of miles per commuter topped the pre COVID-19 peak (different for each state) for two US states, and in 14 US states driving activity increased to 80% or more of the pre-COVID driving levels, according to Nexar. It's some of the hardest hit US states, including New...

(5 May 2020) As self-isolation mode continues across the globe, consumers waiting out the pandemic from home are relying more heavily on delivery services for personal and business essentials. Delivery dependence can be seen in the strong growth in downloads of delivery company apps, like FedEx, and package tracking apps, like Arrive, as estimated by apptopia. New downloads of package tracking apps are currently above the levels seen during the most recent holiday season. While delivery...

(Published - April 20, 2020. Data updated - May 26, 2020) A growing number of social protests have swept the United States this month in opposition to measures imposed to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Protesters seek policy changes to restart state economies and are providing fresh political opportunities that President Trump has reframed via Twitter as an imperative to 'LIBERATE' US states from COVID-19 restrictions. In the week spanning 13-19 April 2020, we estimate that approximately...

For the first time during the post World War II era, the global economy is expected to shrink due to measures in force worldwide to suppress the coronavirus, according to the IMF World Economic Outlook (WEO) released on April 14, 2020. In this edition of the WEO, the IMF shortened the forecast horizon to 2021 instead of the expected 2025 horizon and limited the number of indicators available in its statistical tables because of the high level of uncertainty in current global economic...

(4 March 2021) The November 2020 through February 2021 period featured in the heat map below highlights the vulnerability of specific sectors to COVID-19 economic dynamics. Airlines, department stores, live events, and cruise lines have each been uniquely affected by restrictions on social activity, travel, and operations and have decelerated compared to the average baseline. Select another country from the dropdown menu below to examine other regions of interest. Or, click on a sector and...

The tendency to buy domestic products has always been observed in consumer behavior. In a pandemic situation, emotions are elevated and carry through to consumer behavior. According to Cognovi Labs, Americans are becoming more motivated to buy goods made in America. One of the reasons for this change in motivation is the desire of Americans to avoid dependence on other countries for vital goods. At the beginning of March, consumers were panic buying face masks and exhausted supplies. Cognovi...

Daily experience and surveys alike tell us that emotions greatly influence consumer behavior. Now that in many areas of the world life has come to a standstill in anticipation of the end of the pandemic, it is especially important to gain timely and reliable insights into consumers' emotional states. Cognovi Labs, an alternative data provider, uses artificial intelligence to measure the emotions of a population and evaluate consumer emotions and intentions in the United States. Cognovi Labs...

The coronavirus outbreak has affected American consumer patterns and business interactions. According to SimilarWeb, which provides web traffic data from various web services, web traffic patterns shifted immediately after the first reports of confirmed COVID-19 cases. These shifts give investors important information about the extent of impact on end users as well as about unique industry-specific formats of running business during the COVID-19 pandemic. While travel, airlines, and hotel...

(27 March 2020) The force that is 'global social exclusion' is becoming a fatal event for some businesses that rely on in-person labor force and customers, while for others it is a chance for rapid growth and development of new services lines. As the coronavirus infections curve worldwide has shifted over recent weeks to become still steeper, entire companies have begun switching to remote work operations. Many industries, such as air travel, tourism, and retail are undergoing rapid business...

Prosper Insights & Analytics has 18 years of experience producing market leading monthly survey-based research of consumers' overall confidence. In its most recent survey, Prosper asked consumers about their concerns with regard to the coronavirus pandemic and the related cancellation of major events. You can explore Prosper's latest findings in depth below, but we'll give the spoiler: 82% of US consumers expressed one form of concern or another and believe that they will somehow experience...

Has travel been affected by the coronavirus, and if so by how much and where? The overall volume of passengers traveling by air affects many of disparate industries - not just airlines but travel sites and aggregators that sell tickets, hotels and car rental companies that rely on airports for a large volume of their business, credit card companies, restaurants and retailers. The list can go on. To try and gauge the impact that a reduction in travel due to the coronavirus might be...

Recent news reports have highlighted an increase in foot traffic for Costco as the spread of the coronavirus spurs people to stock up on essentials. Some analysis has put the number of visitors to Costco stores in the US up 72% year-over-year. Advan ran a detailed analysis of true foot traffic at Costco. The graph below shows average daily traffic for each month since October 2015, with year-over-year changes overlaid.

In 2016, Donald Trump promised to reduce taxes and drive rapid economic growth, get rid of federal debt and create new jobs. Over the duration of his presidency, he's made new pledges and claims that can—and frequently are—cross-checked with official data. Today we're tapping into our deep catalog of official US government data to share a couple of examples of how you can use this data to evaluate some of the pledges and claims of President Trump to answer, "How is that working out?"

(3 February 2020) As the World Health Organization has elevated the global public health threat level posed by the coronavirus to 'very high' (China) and 'high' (rest of the world), global economic health is also beginning to suffer. The number of people affected by the coronavirus globally may seem relatively small — just over 14,632 deaths and 335,953 people infected — yet without containment, especially to avoid spread to countries with weaker healthcare systems, the human (and economic)...

(3 February 2020) Last Wednesday (15 January), China and the United States signed 'phase one' of their bilateral trade deal to halt an immediate further escalation in tariffs by either country. Phase 1 does nothing to relax the tariffs imposed over the last couple of years to the detriment of global growth. By the end of 2019, the US and China had imposed 20 percent import tariffs on more than 60 percent of bilateral merchandise trade turnover, a reduction of global GDP growth in 2019 by an...

As 2019 comes to a close, take a look at the 5 most popular Data Driven insights of 2019. Enjoy the review!

The US H-1B visa program that allows educated foreign professionals to work in the United States is taking a hit under the Trump Administration. In 2019, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) denied about 15 percent of H-1B visa petitions, a notable shift from 2015 when the denial rate was 4 percent, a rate second only to L-1A and L-1B visas, which now have a 28 percent denial rate. The Administration’s “put American workers first” policy seeks to improve Americans' welfare by...

In spite of efforts to curb emissions and the rising global temperature, the climate has changed as the volume of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has grown over the past century and a half. This reality places a fine point on the imperative of countries preparing for and adapting to the negative consequences of climate change. The Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative's (ND-GAIN) Country Index measures climate adaptation of 192 countries over the past 23 years. Measuring two main...

It sounds like a riddle: how many Big Macs for your entire daily wage? Granted, many of our readers may not even have access to a Big Mac where they live (not to mention those who wouldn’t buy Big Macs if they were vegetarian, among other reasons). So, why is the Big Mac Index from the Economist a well-known concept around the world? It’s simple: Big Macs are easier for the overwhelming majority of the world’s population to understand as opposed to economic concepts like “GDP per capita in...

A policy decision to increase public transport fares in Chile earlier this month triggered nearly two weeks of mass protests across Chile's largest cities, including the capital city of Santiago. While Chilean President Sebastián Piñera last week announced economic reforms to bring peace to the country - raising pensions, monthly minimum wages, and taxes on the wealthy - the socio-economic deficits of the country have been exposed and the youth mobilized. Prosperity for Chile is real and...

Central banks around the world are increasingly resorting to more dovish monetary policies against a backdrop of slowing economic growth. Among the 38 central banks tracked by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), 21 banks adopted interest rate cuts over the three-month period from July to September, compared to 13 during the same three-month period of 2018. Several advanced economies, including Denmark, Japan, Switzerland, Sweden, and the European Central Bank (ECB)-regulated Euro...

(October 2019) China and the United States reached a partial trade deal on Friday, October 11, with the US agreeing to forgo further tariff escalation in exchange for China agreeing to resume purchases of US farm products. However, even if trade terms improve between the countries, recent preliminary figures released by China's customs office suggest Chinese exports hurt by the trade war will need time to recover to 2018 levels. Since the beginning of 2019, China exported $348 billion to the...

Recent analysis from the IMF cites increasing uncertainty caused by trade tensions as a primary driver of sluggish global growth, a trend which moved the IMF to issue a downward revision to its global GDP growth forecast in the July edition of the World Economic Outlook. According to IMF estimates, the escalation of trade uncertainty observed this year could consume around 0.75 percentage points of global growth in 2019. To track trade tensions globally, the IMF and Stanford University teamed...

(September 2019) Pork prices in China have increased 82 percent over the last year, presenting an unconventional potential threat to the monetary easing policy Beijing announced earlier this month.​ According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of China, the growth rate of pork prices is accelerating: before this month's wild increase, the average price of pork jumped 19.3 percent year-on-year in July and 47.6 percent in August as the African swine flu ​outbreak ​further...

In August, US manufacturing activity contracted 2.1 points from July, the largest contraction in nearly three years. According to the Institute of Supply Management (ISM) Purchasing Manufacturing Index (PMI) - commonly referred to as the ISM manufacturing index - fell to 49.1, making the US a late comer to a growing club of large economies, such as China, the Eurozone, Japan, and the United Kingdom, that have likewise reported contracting manufacturing sectors in recent months. The PMI is...

Ask any American soybean farmer about current market conditions and US-China trade frictions will bubble up in the conversation. After the late June meeting between presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump in Osaka, Trump assured American farmers that trade talks would resume and that China would buy a tremendous amount of food and agricultural products very soon. Yet, in the month since, no significant purchases have been announced and no information is publicly available on large purchases in...

In 2018, not only did tuition rates for US higher education hold relatively flat, but US state and local government spending on higher education grew in line with inflation for a total contribution of $99 billion, according to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association. Government funding for higher education tumbled in the aftermath of the 2007-2008 global financial crisis, but has since rebounded, growing approximately 20 percent in the last 5 years. Some would argue that...

The leveraged loans* market in the US ballooned in 2018. According to the US Federal Reserve’s latest Financial Stability Report (May 2019), leveraged loans outstanding reached $1.15 trillion in the 4th quarter of 2018, a growth of 20.1 percent during 2018 alone. At the same time, deteriorating lending standards and investors’ growing risk appetite have increased funds available to indebted companies and created fresh vulnerability within the financial system. Why should this market be of such...

Throughout modern history the postal industry has played a role in connecting people, businesses, and governments around the world. Today we’re witnessing a decline and reinvention in the traditional mail delivery business as fast (and in some cases free) e-commerce options emerge. The Office for National Statistics for the UK reported that online sales made up 18 percent of total retail sales nationally during 2018. High growth rates were also reported in research from IMRG and Capgemini,...

Are you investing in the best economies for your industry's footprint? What factors weigh most heavily on your investment decisions? Is your economy improving in areas that matter most to investors? Economists, investors, and other analysts worldwide rely on multi-economy datasets from the likes of the World Bank and IMF as well as indices to make comparisons across time and countries and address these sorts of questions. The Global Opportunity Index (GOI) developed by the Milken Institute...

(17 April 2020) Chinese GDP contracted 6.8 percent in the first quarter of 2020 according to China's National Bureau of Statistics. While it is the first decline in the history of quarterly GDP growth records, which date back to 1993, annual GDP, which has a longer history, dropped below zero once before in 1976. It is still unclear whether the Chinese economy will register a decline at the end of 2020. According to the IMF's latest World Economic Outlook, China is among the critical few...

Housing represents a growing source of budgetary pressure for Americans, and the data suggests American's desire for space is at least partially to blame. In 2017, housing represented 33 percent of total US household expenditures, with rent and mortgage—as compared to other household expenses like furnishings and utilities—making up about 60 percent of the household budget, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Renters have been particularly hard hit, with more than 40 percent...

(29 April 2021) The volume of electricity consumed by bitcoin mining continues to grow globally, approaching the levels of energy consumption of some of the world's larger economies and bringing the environmental sustainability of the cryptocurrency into question. Tesla, which bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin in January, causing the price to surge to more than $55,000, became a target of bitcoin critics who say the step undermines the car company's environmental image. According to...

During the first two months of 2019, 74,000 cases of measles were reported globally. A highly contagious, virus borne illness, measles is transmitted through the air, such as when an infected person sneezes or coughs. Of the cases in early 2019, nearly half occurred in January in the African island country of Madagascar (36,869 cases). The official figure for Madagascar in February was down to 10,328 new cases.Europe and South America have been largely spared from new measles cases in 2019....

Smart speakers are the fastest-growing consumer technology today, outstripping augmented reality, virtual reality, and even wearables, according to Canalys, a global technology market analyst firm based in Singapore. Worldwide shipments of smart speakers grew to 78 million units in 2018, up 125 percent from 35 million in 2017. In the third quarter of 2018, 42 percent of smart speakers were shipped to the United States, making it the single most important market for smart speakers.Google and...

In November 2018, the United States exported a historic 2.6 million barrels of crude oil per day to become the world’s fifth largest exporter of crude oil. While the US is on track to maintain this historic volume of production during the next couple of years, the EIA in March tempered its February production growth forecast, issuing a 0.9 percent downward revision for 2019 and 1.3 percent revision for 2020. The current forecast predicts average 12.3 million b/d production this year and 13...

The Index of Small Business Optimism increased 0.5 points in February to 101.7, according to the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), ending a 5-month decline during which the index tumbled to the lowest level since US President Trump took office. The decline of small business optimism was amid overall growing economic uncertainty and the partial US government shutdown and tracked with a declining consumer confidence index. As compared to the previous month, more US small...

In the 10 years since the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, aka “Great Recession,” the global debt of the non-financial sector increased by 53 percent to reach $178 trillion in the third quarter of 2018, according to the Bank for International Settlements. Global debt, which represents the outstanding credit provided by domestic banks and other institutions to households, non-financial corporations, and government, is quite simply the driver of the modern economy. Over the 2008-2018 period,...

The net worth of US households tumbled 3.5 percent quarter-on-quarter during the fourth quarter of 2018, according to the US Federal Reserve. Only twice since 1952, once in 1962 and again in 2008, was a larger drop reported, and yet for most Americans it’s the proverbial tree falling in the woods: did anyone feel it? The slump in 4Q 2018 is attributable to the poor performance of the stock market in late 2018 and the corresponding hit to the value of household holdings of corporate...

US tech companies are keeping lucrative US Department of Defense (DoD) contracts in their sights as indicated by growing attendance at DoD events. This is unsurprising given the rapid growth of AI technology—which the DoD wants to use in predictive maintenance, process automation, and humanitarian assistance—and the DoD’s long-maintained reliance on private contractors. According to the US Federal Procurement Data System, in 2017, DoD obligated $321 billion to contractors, which is more...

By 2021, the global macroeconomic imbalance may return to the historic 2007-2008 levels that preceded the global financial crisis (aka the Great Depression). A high macroeconomic imbalance may be dangerous as the last time it reached these levels resulted in significant global economic downturn. The global macroeconomic imbalance can be measured as the standard deviation of the annual current account balances (CAB) of the largest economies. As goods and services make up the predominant...

(13 March 2019) Consumer confidence in the world's biggest economy, the United States, rebounded in February after a sharp drop in January, according to the University of Michigan. January’s decrease was the single sharpest drop in consumer sentiment since 2012 and was at least partially spurred by the partial US government shutdown. In February, the Federal Reserve signaled that it will hold off on further interest rate hikes and trade relations with China continued to thaw, bolstering the...

Every day events around the world cause ripple effects that affect global, national, and local levels of economic and political uncertainty. Recent mainstream examples include US sanctions against Venezuela, Brexit, the partial US government shutdown, protests in France, and the US-China trade war. As uncertainty rises, we observe markets responding, whether you're tracking stock prices, commodity prices, or even interest rates. Today we have another more comprehensive measure available to...

On January 28, 2019, the US announced sanctions against Venezuela's state-owned oil company, PDVSA, a move to restrict socialist President Nicolas Maduro's flow of oil revenues and strengthen the hand of the opposition—led by Juan Guaidó—to trigger elections in Venezuela. The sanctions against PDVSA (and other government-owned companies) are expected to come into force in April. While companies would be permitted to continue commercial transactions, all payments would be held in a "blocked...

If all goes as planned, March 29, 2019, will go down in history as the day the UK divorced the EU, this despite the UK parliament overwhelmingly rejecting the Brexit deal agreed on November 14, 2018, between Brussels and UK Prime Minister Theresa May. In a drawn out, tightly coordinated exit process, dire consequences in terms of international trade, financial, and even tourism flows can be mitigated. But, what if instead Brexit triggers a domino effect on the global economy because either...

In December 2018, average hourly earnings in the United States increased by 3.2 percent from December 2017, the highest rate increase since May 2009. In addition, due to low inflation American workers saw the largest improvement in real hourly earnings since August 2016. Wages grew because the labor market tightened, as indicated by the historically low unemployment rates. Since rising wages, in general, mean higher inflation, the Federal Reserve may respond by increasing interest rates to...

(January 19, 2019) Student loans in the United States represent the second largest type of household debt after home mortgages and were not only impervious to the 2009 recession, but are steadily rising along with total US household debt. As of the third quarter of 2018, student debt outstanding expanded by 2.6 percent, reaching a peak of $1.44 trillion, which is higher than total US auto loans and credit card debt. Total student loan debt has more than doubled since 2009 and grown six-fold...

Take a look back through 2018 with the most popular Viz of the Day's from our team at Knoema. Revisit past look backs at the most popular Viz of the Days of 2017 and 2016.

Weeks after US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to a temporary halt in the US-China trade war, the first positive signs of a return to normal trade relations are emerging. Last week, the China Grain Reserves Corporation (Sinograin) and fellow state-run Chinese enterprise Cofco bought more than 1.5 million tons of US soybeans, the first significant deal since the countries agreed to a 90-day truce from December 1, 2018, to March 1, 2019. The announcement caused a...

What started on November 17 as a revolt against rising fuel taxes in France has now lasted six consecutive weekends and evolved into a full-blown rejection of the socioeconomic policies of French President Emmanuel Macron. Protestors targeting of stagnant wages, rising prices and taxes, high unemployment in rural areas, pension security, government spending on bureaucrats, university entry requirements, and other issues has yielded some concessions—such as a minimum wage increase—yet protestors...

The US shale production boom and recovery of global oil prices following the global financial crisis of 2007-2008 created an attractive environment for new LNG projects. But continued investment and the trade routes that emerge from contracts between producers and consumers are subject to change, as we are witnessing now in the context of the increasingly acrimonious trade dynamic between the United States and China. In August, China floated a 25 percent tariff on LNG imports from the...

While mainstream media outlets globally may be focused on the relationship between climate change and extreme weather, crop performance, and infrastructure resilience, economists and business strategists alike are turning toward greener measures and outlooks of economic performance. The 2018 Global Green Economy Index (GGEI) by Dual Citizen LLC is one of several initiatives—others include the Green Growth Knowledge Platform and the UN Partnership for Action on Green Economy—working to provide...

While in some ways technology has changed so much about the world today, it has not been able to erase the vulnerability of diverse populations globally to pandemics, outbreaks, and epidemics that costs lives and undercuts economic growth. In 2016, 1,436 people died due to epidemics, and the global economy lost an estimated $562 billion, which is roughly equivalent to 1.3 percent of global income. This places epidemics on par with some major natural disasters in terms of economic cost.In the...

Small businesses in the United States are engines of the American economy, employing nearly 20 percent of Americans. So, what makes one state more small-business friendly than another? The results are in from the Thumbtack Small Business Survey—the largest continuous study of small business perceptions of government policy in the US—and may even surprise you if you associate big cities and large population centers with small business opportunity. #1 South Dakota. Spanning geography and...

(Aug. 22, 2018) One could argue that in a world subject to the inevitability of business cycles, the United States is overdue for a recession. During the 60 year period from 1950 to 2010, the US economy experienced 10 recessions, averaging one recession every six years. In contrast, the longest period of uninterrupted economic growth was just shy of 10 years. The US is now in the midst of nine years of economic growth with the last "Great Recession" a fading memory for some. Will 2019 bring...

In July, after the NATO summit in Brussels, US President Donald Trump tweeted that "the United States is spending far more on NATO than any other country. This is not fair, nor is it acceptable." But, is the US spending more on NATO than other members? And, if so, is the US spending level unfair relative to that which the US—and the other 28 members—have agreed? Let's look at the data. Measure 1: Defense Expenditures. In 2018,* the US will spend an estimated $706 billion on defense globally....

India is not only the third largest economy in the world, but of the top 10 largest economies globally, it has the third highest share of bad loans, too. India's non-performing loans represent 10 percent of total bank loans and about $210 billion of outstanding debt. Since 2008 when attention shifted globally to financial stability and the role of the banking sector, the share of non-performing loans in India has grown by 7.5 percent and is expected to worsen in the coming years, according to...

Famous intellects and innovators including the likes of Benjamin Franklin and Nicola Tesla are known not only for their contributions to the world but for doing so on very few hours of sleep per night. We may like to think we could all achieve similar success if we slept less and worked more yet the reality of the human mind and body suggests that insufficient sleep has adverse and far-reaching consequences on our health and well-being and, ultimately, the global economy. The findings of a...

The surge in popularity of sport utlity vehicles in the US has come at a cost, with SUVs overtaking sedans in fatal pedestrian accidents. Experts attribute the higher profile of the front of SUVs—the collision point in most pedestrian collisions—as leading to a higher death rate compared to lower profile sedans. Data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reveals that light trucks—including SUVs, minivans, and pickup trucks—now account for 42.2 percent of pedestrian...

The Government of Haiti on July 6 imposed price hikes for a variety of fuels, sparking violent protests across the country that cost lives, destroyed property, shut down air traffic, and even caused embassies, business, schools, and other entities to restrict transit and activity in the country. The government increased gasoline prices by 38 percent, kerosene by 51 percent, and diesel by 47 percent. Currently, gasoline costs $0.88 per liter while diesel costs $0.7 per liter, according to...

Tens of thousands of Americans have died from the flu during the last five flu seasons, despite US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) research findings that the flu vaccine reduces the risk of flu illness by 40-60 percent and saves thousands of lives each flu season. A variety of factors contributed to the estimated 30.9 million illnesses, 14.5 million medical visits, 600,000 hospitalizations in the US related to flu during the 2016-2017 flu season. According to the CDC, the two...

Just as governments struggle to simultaneously address obesity and hunger, the world’s population continues to grow ... and shrink. The United Nations estimates that between 2015 and 2050 49 countries will experience population declines even as the total world population reaches 9.77 billion. Moreover, in all but two countries the ratio of old population to working-age population will increase by 2050, and an estimated 135 countries will experience fertility rates below replacement rates. While...

If energy prices are a reliable indicator, then power grids even in green-friendly Europe are not yet ready for a comprehensive transition to renewable energy. Due to lagging investment and development of storage technologies for renewable power, unseasonably sunny and windy periods across Europe continue to lead to imbalances in power supply and demand that result a bizarre phenomenon: negative energy prices. Electricity prices in several European countries, including Belgium, France,...

Suicide in the US is now considered a major public health issue. In 2016, 45,000 Americans took their own lives, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a 53 percent increase since just 2000. A recent CDC study on trends in suicide rates by US state revealed that in the period from 1999 to 2016 the suicide rate increased in all but one state, Nevada. Among US states, the suicide rate varied from six deaths per 100,000 population in the District of Columbia to 25 in...

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) kill about 40 million people annually. Comprising chronic lung diseases, diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular diseases, NCDs are the result of a characteristic Western, predominantly urban lifestyle and negative environmental factors. Almost three-quarters of global NCD deaths arise from low or middle income countries, where the incidence of NCDs is on the rise. - World Economic Forum The major common lifestyle risk factors of non-communicable diseases are...

Last year the government of China formally adopted the One Belt One Road Initiative to improve the transport and trading links between China and Eurasian and African countries. A modern day version of the Silk Road network of trade routes between East and West circa 207 BCE, One Belt One Road (aka Belt and Road Initiative or just BRI) will be the largest investment initiative in history. BRI will span more than 68 countries and including an estimated $8 trillion of investment in transportation...

Taiwan, an island off the southwestern coast of China, is the most populous state and largest economy that is not a member of the United Nations. Today, Taiwan is home to 23.7 million people, a population comparable to that of Xinjiang, Beijing, and Shanghai. Despite a recent economic slowdown, Taiwan's GDP per capita stands at $25,000, nearly triple that of China. In terms of PPP, Taiwan ranks 77th in the world; China ranks 108th. While Taiwan is an economic success, the island remains...

Consumer sentiment among US residents surged in March to its highest value since 2004, according to the University of Michigan. An improving job market, expectations of increased disposable income from tax cuts, and prospects for continued economic growth offset concerns about tariffs and stock market volatility triggered by the US president’s impulsive tweets and policy shifts. Growing confidence should help to stimulate consumer spending, roughly 69 percent of the US economy in the first...

Personal safety, as a basic human need, is encapsulated globally in national legislation and international accords, all with the aim of maintaining public order and safety. While definitions of law and order may vary by country—and with it the tasks assigned to security forces—the source of funding is nearly universally taxpayers. Every taxpayer thereby has the right to know whether these public expenditures are effective. In today’s viz we explore the efficiency of public safety expenditures...

Australia is running a continuous and growing deficit in total oil stocks, defying the International Energy Agency's (IEA) mandate on members to maintain 90-days of coverage and perpetuating the country’s vulnerability to swings in global oil markets. Whether global supply imbalances arise from geopolitical discord, OPEC-sanctioned supply adjustments, or other market balance factors, the fact that Australia maintains no strategic reserve and has less than a 50 day supply of oil bodes poorly for...

Russia's recovery from economic recession could be complicated by sanctions announced recently by US President Donald Trump, with still greater potential of painful restrictions on investors and Russian companies seeking to raise capital in Western markets. This year, the US Treasury initiated new sanctions against Russian persons and entities for activities including the alleged poisoning in the UK of former FSB Officer Skripal and his daughter as well as Moscow's alleged meddling in the 2016...

Corporate growth strategies typically include some combination of deepening existing market penetration and new product and market development. New market entry through acquisitions, greenfield investment, joint venture or other forms are considered generally to be the most controllable ways to drive business growth. And, many emerging markets, such as Brazil, India, Argentina, with their growing middle-classes are attractive targets for these growth strategies. With the ever-increasing...

Oil producers market more than 160 unique crude oils today, each varying from light to heavy, with different sulfur levels and other chemical attributes that affect price and market. Only a few individual crudes—particularly Brent and West Texas Intermediate (WTI)—serve as industry benchmarks. The OPEC Reference Basket (ORB) is another common benchmark. The ORB represents a weighted average of prices for the petroleum blends produced by the 14 member states of the Organization of the Petroleum...

On March 8, 2018, US president Donald Trump issued two proclamations to adjust US imports of aluminum and steel from all countries except Canada and Mexico, key regional allies and trade partners. President Trump asserted that a 25 percent tariff on steel “articles” and a 10 percent tariff on aluminum articles are necessary for the US to develop its domestic steel and aluminum industries and to protect and create jobs. The US is the world's largest importer of the steel and aluminum articles...

The PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympic Games XXIII in the Republic of Korea will kick off tomorrow, February 9th, 2018. The fact that the Olympic Committee selected South Korea to host along with the rapidly growing number of international tourist arrivals to the country in recent years suggests that South Korea is a safe and hospitable destination. But, what does the data tell us? Crime. The data tells us that in all likelihood, the flu will be more threatening to tourists and athletes than...

According to the American Time Use Survey, Americans spend an average of 15 minutes daily playing games. That’s more time than Americans spend walking, grocery shopping, or managing their finances. The gaming industry is evolving rapidly. Every producer wants to involve as many users as possible and offers realistic graphics, new opportunities, and tasks to take advantage of the explosive growth in gaming interfaces made possible by the Internet and smartphones. Producers are also increasing...

Ecuador has the world's highest share of nascent entrepreneurs per capita at about 30 percent of the population. This measure is known as total early-stage entrepreneurial activity (TEA). But, does this mean that Ecuador is more entrepreneurial than the United States, which has a TEA of only 14 percent? The answer depends on how we define “entrepreneur”. One key global economic growth driver is the ability of an entrepreneur to bring a concept to market, adding to national income, providing...

How will you remember 2017? Today we recall the 20 most notable data stories of 2017 from Knoema's Viz of the Day series.

Nine countries in the world are nuclear-capable: China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. As of January 2017, these nuclear powers possessed approximately 14,935 nuclear weapons, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Almost 40 percent of total nuclear forces are warheads in central storage that would require some preparation to deploy, such as transportation and loading onto launchers.SIPRI...

Back in early 2016, Yemen ranked third globally for the number of reported cases of cholera, a disease all too common in developing countries with poor access to reliable water and sanitation facilities. Cholera is an infection of the small intestine that, with proper treatment, can be cured in 99 percent of cases; without treatment, it can kill within hours. By October 2016, the disease moved into the headlines in war-torn Yemen as the first wave of one of the worst cholera outbreaks in modern...

The Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC) will hold an extraordinary summit in Istanbul, Turkey, on Wednesday, December 13, 2017, to discuss the repercussions of the announcement of US President Donald Trump last week recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Last Monday, the OIC appealed to its 57 member states to cut ties with any country that recognizes Israel’s annexation of Jerusalem. If the members of the OIC revise bilateral trade relations with the US, which OIC...

On Wednesday, November 15, the oldest among the longest ruling national leaders, Robert Mugabe, the 93-year-old president of Zimbabwe who has ruled the country for 37 years, was taken into custody by the country’s military. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai is demanding that President Mugabe resign, despite the president’s refusal to step down ahead of next year's presidential elections. According to press reporting, the military action was in response to Mugabe firing his deputy Emmerson...

A recent tweet by US President Donald Trump referred to the contribution of terrorism to increasing crime in the UK as a red flag for the US, triggering an official response from the UK government and public scrutiny of the US president’s assertion. As always at Knoema, we turn to the data. The official report by the UK's Office for National Statistics (ONS) confirms that reported crime, including fraud, has increased by 13 percent since last year, yet this is neither the only or necessarily...

In June, US crude oil exports reached historic levels at nearly 2.2 million barrels per day (b/d), a level similar to that of Nigeria and Iran. From 1975 until late 2015, a federal ban on the export of US crude oil severely restricted crude oil exports to all countries except Canada. By lifting the ban, the US Government has transformed the United States into a major exporter of crude oil and a force that is reshaping global oil markets. To date in 2018, the United States has averaged more...

Daphne Caruana Galizia, the lead journalist in the investigation of the Panama Papers and corruption in Malta, was assassinated last week by a car bomb near her home. Ms. Galizia brought the spotlight to Malta’s connection to the infamous Panama Papers. She had also recently exposed in an article on her blog - which was often had a larger readership than the combined circulation of the country’s newspapers - the connection of Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and two of his closest aides to...

Some countries are famous for the quality of their roads (and maybe also the speeds you may go on them). According to the Global Competitiveness Report, the UAE boasts the best roads. France, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, and Switzerland also have very high-quality roads—with a ‘quality of roads' score higher than 6—and yet none make the top 100 countries by land area and thus all fall outside the group of countries with the largest road networks. If large countries with expansive road networks...

On September 11, the UN Security Council adopted its 8th sanction resolution against North Korea. The resolution came in response to the country’s nuclear test on September 3 in violation of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty of 1996 (CTBT) banning nuclear explosions regardless of purpose. The test was the sixth violation by North Korea. Previously, North Korea conducted nuclear tests in 2006, 2009, 2013, and twice in 2016. Each time North Korea has conducted nuclear tests, the UN...

Bitcoins, ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies, commonly known as "digital gold", are gaining exposure globally through various media outlets even though very few countries officially recognize cryptocurrency as legal currency. Official national-level regulatory positions relative to cryptocurrency may be separated into three main groups: totally against, legalized, and uncertain. The most interesting situation is uncertain because of the market basis at stake if governments turn away from...

The household debt balance in the United States reached a new all-time high of $13.3 trillion in the second quarter of 2018, according to the latest report from the Center for Microeconomic Data of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. US household debt has risen continuously since 2013, now constituting 65 percent of US GDP and exceeding the 2008 pre-crisis level by nearly $475 billion. US household debt is indisputably large in absolute terms, now exceeding the GDP China, the world's...

In early September, the world learned that the personal data of 143 million Americans, or about half the US population, was compromised by an free-roaming, multi-month penetration of Equifax. As one of three major US consumer credit reporting agencies, the historic breach and suspicious trading of shares by Equifax executives shortly after the breach was discovered moved the US Senate banking committee to convene a panel to question the former Equifax Chair and CEO Richard Smith. With the...

Modern and legacy political and military relationships, business investment, and other factors weigh on the power of one’s passport, making the list of least and most welcoming countries globally highly dependent on your citizenship. For example, a German passport holder gains access to more countries than travelers on Chinese or Senegalese passports. However, that same German passport holder cannot visit Equatorial Guinea without a visa while a Chinese passport holder may enter. No matter...

North America’s vulnerability to a variety of natural disasters has dominated media coverage in recent weeks. While Hurricane Harvey continued its path across Texas and Louisiana, Mexico was struck by an 8.1 magnitude earthquake, which was then swept out of the headlines as Hurricane Irma barreled through the Caribbean and Southeastern United States. Meanwhile, between the headlines, you may have read about forest fires raging in Canada and the US, recently consuming historic landmarks in...

Electronic commerce, aka e-commerce, was introduced more than 50 years ago to share financial or business documents from one company to another. Today, with the spread of the Internet and retail giants such as eBay and Amazon, online shopping is probably what comes to mind for most people when they hear e-commerce mentioned. According to the US Census Bureau, e-commerce retail sales in 2000 were valued at $27.6 billion. By 2016, e-commerce retail sales grew by more than 1,300 percent to over...

Every day we have just 24 hours to accomplish it all. And, every day we make hundreds of decisions to parse out those 24 hours. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics in its American Time Use Survey examines just how Americans divvy up their time with input gathered from over 180,000 interviewees aged 15 and older. The survey yields unique insight into"how, where, and with whom Americans spend their time”. Following are a few "how" highlights from the 2016 survey: In 2016, Americans spent an...

October 2017 - The water system of Brownsville, Texas, with one of the highest poverty rates in the US, is the largest US water utilities with the worst water quality. Testing in 2015 revealed 12 contaminants above established health guidelines. Among those contaminants, the highest abnormality was arsenic, a naturally occurring mineral that causes bladder, lung and skin cancer, as well as harm to the skin and lungs. Arsenic levels in Brownsville's water supply—serving 176,000 people—were 700...

Air pollution occurs when chemical, physical or biological substances alter the natural characteristics of the atmosphere, potentially leading to respiratory and other diseases that can be lethal. Home furnaces, automobiles, industrial plants, and forest fires are the main sources of air pollution worldwide.Among the pollutants of greatest public health concern are particulate matter-including some forms of smoke, soot, dust, salt, acids, and metals - carbon monoxide, ozone, nitrogen dioxide,...

On August 4, President Paul Kagame won election to serve a third consecutive seven-year term as president of Rwanda, a small African country with a population of 12 million. President Kagame first served as president in 2000 when his predecessor, Pasteur Bizimungu, resigned. Some consider him to be among the longest serving world leaders based on his initial service as Rwanda’s Vice President and Minister of Defence. A 2015 national referendum introduced a constitutional amendment that lifted...

When we read headlines about mishaps aboard cruise ships and ferries, we immediately wonder, “How safe are these ships?” even if statistically plane crashes are more common and deadly and more highly relied upon by passengers each year. Ship staffs and vessel captains are always on the lookout for a variety of potential disasters at sea including “man overboard” calls that send the ship into emergency rescue mode. Nearly 300 people have gone overboard since 1995, according to Cruise Junkie,...

US fertility rates hit the lowest level ever recorded during the first quarter of 2017, reflecting both biological and social changes among the population, including delaying child-bearing and electively choosing not to have children. The current downward trend started in 2007-2008 shortly before the global economic crisis, which could have affected financial resources and planning decisions, and has only recently slowed to a decrease of about 1 percent annually as of 2015. During the first...

The Deloitte UK quarterly CFO Survey illuminates the sentiments and strategies of major corporate users of capital to gauge attitudes related to valuations, risk, and financing. Deloitte provides open access to the current and historical survey results to enable analysis and application of the survey results. ___________________ Opponents of the prospective withdrawal of the UK from the EU, aka Brexit, held a protest march in central London on 9 September that gathered tens of thousands of...

Driven by geography, culture and so much more, countries around the world host an amazing diversity of festivals, some to celebrate, some to remember, and some, … just because! Everfest publishes FEST300, a list of the 300 best upcoming festivals. Here are some fun facts pulled from FEST300: Of the 170 festivals coming up 2018, Everfest rated 26 as 5 star, the highest rating, while the majority—111 festivals—received a 4.5, and only one festival—the Maha Shivaratri in Nepal—earned a 3. ...

(December 2022) You sometimes hear, “Oh, to be young,” and there is merit to that sentiment depending on where you live out your retirement years. Retirement security is not an issue weighing on individuals alone. It is among the top social issues globally because of a simple fact: the world’s population is getting older. According to the World Bank, the share of people aged 65 and older will double by 2050 to reach 1.6 billion. Societies must grapple with how to ensure people have the...

Take a close look at the top 20 locations worldwide for consumption of distilled spirits and you’ll observe that half of the list is composed of US states. Remarkably, however, the US ranks only 48th of 185 countries for per capita consumption of all alcoholic beverages, according to the World Health Organization. In the ranking by consumption of spirits per capita, the US jumps to 23rd worldwide. Americans consumed a total of about 530 million gallons (2 billion liters) of spirits in 2015....

The 104th Tour de France began July 1 in Düsseldorf, Germany and will end on the famous Champs-Elysees in Paris on July 23 after riders complete 21 stages and 3,540 km. Among the world’s most famous and prestigious cycling events, the Tour de France has been held each July since 1903.* A multi-stage race finishing in France but traversing neighboring countries, the Tour is organized around five stage types: flat, medium and high mountain, individual time, and intermediate sprint. The 2017 Tour...

Millennials are marked for their affinity with media and digital technologies and the consequent positive effect on policy and economy of cities they live in. The migration of individuals of this generation is thus of high interest to everyone from city planners and real estate agents to corporations with long supply chains to recalibrate to the demands of evolving city demographics. Millennials—those aged 17-37 years, i.e. born between the early 1980s to early 2000s—constitute roughly...

How do fashion designers bring the latest trends on display at the likes of the Paris Fashion Week to the masses? This work belongs to the world of apparel manufacturers and retailers who, with an eye to the cat walks, refashion the latest colors, cuts, and fabrics to deliver the designs at a variety of price points. The famous luxury brand Christian Dior, which has been the top accessories retailer in the Forbes World’s Biggest Public Companies list since 2011, is also the leading apparel...

Consistent with traditional economic theory, the number of retailers per million compared to national inflation rates reveals that in markets with greater market competition, prices tend to rise more slowly. Retailers in the food and the sport and leisure sectors, however, work with unique market dynamics that diverge from this relationship and require careful branding and market positioning to succeed. Malta, Iceland, and Luxembourg have the highest number of retail chains per million and...

In 2016, Germany, Thailand, and Hong Kong were the top destinations for international travelers while China and the United States accounted for roughly one-third of total tourism expenditures worldwide, according to the World Tourism Organization. But, as people typically visit specific cities within a country, and not the entire country, it is far more interesting to examine city-level tourism statistics. The Global Destination Cities Index, which includes city-level data on the number of...

Every year a new class of college applicants from all over the world chooses from among 1000s of universities to hang their ambitions. Several respected agencies publish regular ratings for some of the best universities in the world, including QS, the Academic Rating of World Universities, the Center for World University Rankings (CWUR), Times Higher Education (THE), and U.S. News, to establish guidelines for student choice and to systematize the information available about institutions of...

Wilderness and structural fires alike lead to loss of life and property, yet unlike wildfires, home destruction and similar structural disasters can often be prevented with observation of fire safety guidelines and regulations, community vigilance, and the service of well-trained and equipped fire departments nationwide. In today’s Viz, we highlight fire-related statistics covering the US during the period from 1977 to 2015. According to the latest statistics from the National Fire Protection...

Electric cars constitute less than 0.1 percent of the vehicle market today, but market and regulatory forces all but ensure electric vehicles will be the future of the auto industry. According to the 2016 Global Electric Vehicle Outlook from the International Energy Agency, the global electric car stock has grown rapidly since 2010, from about 2,000 cars in 2005 to nearly 1.3 million in 2015. The boom in the electric car industry is usually attributed to three factors: The increasing recovery...

In 2016, the Reputation Institute ranked Sweden, Canada, and Switzerland as the most reputable countries in the world. The Institute's ranking is based on the collective opinions of 48,000 people surveyed throughout the G8* countries. According to the Reputation Institute, a country has a strong reputation if people perceive the country as having an advanced economy, appealing environment, and effective government or admire, trust, or feel esteem toward the country. These perceptions and...

Last week a US State Department official notified refugee groups worldwide that they could begin bringing refugees into the United States through the usual multi-year process “unconstrained by the weekly quotas that were in place” under previous US legal and budgetary requirements. The decision undercuts the executive order issued in January by US President Donald Trump to suspend immediately all refugee admissions for a period of at least four months and to lower the ceiling on the number of...

The results of the Eurovision Song Contest 2017 may have looked different had Russia’s participant not been barred entry by the host: Ukraine. Member countries of the European Broadcasting Union may apply to send a single representative to participate in the event, each performing one song of no more than three minutes. The most popular song is determined by voting of the viewers and the jury, which is composed of representatives of the participating countries. Russia is the most successful...

An extended crisis in the US coal industry and ecological concerns surrounding energy generation are important contributors to the phenomenal growth in solar power generation capacity in the US during the last decade. Net solar electricity generation has increased by 7,135 percent, from about 508,000 MWh in 2006 to 36.8 million MWh in 2016. The average growth rate for solar power generation capacity was about 73 percent per year between 2010 and 2016, a significantly higher rate than other...

Employees choose employers, just as employers choose employees. And, companies like Glassdoor make it easier than ever for people to move beyond annual salary and statistics on the highest paying jobs—none of which they may even be qualified for—in their evaluation of potential employers. Through regular surveys of employees, Glassdoor develops city-based job satisfaction ratings that account for work-life balance, cost of living, and competition among employees or, in other words, hiring...

I understand. You found paradise in films, you had a good trade, you made a good living. The police protected you and there were courts of law. You didn't need a friend like me. But, now you come to me, and you say: 'Don Corleone, give me a good film.' But you don't ask with respect. You don't offer friendship. You don't even think to call me Godfather. Instead, you come into my house on the day my daughter is to be married, and you ask me what is the most ranked movie. - The Godfather One...

The number of new jobless claims reported weekly to the U.S. Department of Labor is considered a leading forward indicator for jobs growth in the US labor market and is thereby linked to expectations for economic growth and potential moves by the US Federal Reserve to increase interest rates. According to the most recent data: For the week ended June 29, the number of initial jobless claims - e.g. new jobless claims - decreased by 8,000 to 221,000. However, 4-weeks moving average, which...

Over the last three years, car sales in the US market have set new all-time records and included a collection of manufacturers that extends well beyond the American classics. In 2015, vehicle sales in the US reached nearly 17.5 million units, a growth of 5.7 percent from 2014 and 25,000 more vehicles than the record setting sales in 2005. The year 2000 marked a turning point in the US auto industry: it was the last year that General Motors and Ford Motor Company combined made up at least 50...

The Syrian Civil War is the largest ongoing military conflict in the world, already claiming a total of at least 167,000 lives* since civil unrest first erupted in March 2011 on the heels of the Arab Spring. Human life is one measure of a wars devastation. Today, we examine the devastation of war from an economic perspective: international trade. The disruption in Syrian trade has already lowered its ranking globally from the 88th largest exporter in 2011 to the 141st in 2015. Syria...

It is estimated that just 150 minutes of cycling or walking spent by each adult per week could save the US economy about $28 billion a year. Yet, cycling and walking still lack the widespread popularity required to realize this level of economic benefit. Between 2007 and 2016, despite a slight increase in the number of people walking or biking to work, only 3.4 percent of the total US population commuted by foot or bike, according to the Alliance for Biking and Walking. In the most populous...

Maintaining a healthy, balanced diet requires information well beyond the more easily understood factors such as product quality and sell-by date. Smart consumers understand how to combine food and food products in a diet to meet the recommended daily values of macronutrients, vitamins, and minerals required to not only support life but to support a specific lifestyle. In today's viz we showcase the vitamin and mineral profiles of popular food and food products, a useful starting point for...

The first trees emerged about 400 million years ago. Humanity needs only about 18,000 years more to destroy them completely. This estimate is overly simplistic and assumes a “no change” scenario from current deforestation trends — an annual average loss of −0.13% — but it forces us to examine the data from a "what if" perspective, keeping in mind that forests are one of the most important natural filters and producers of oxygen. One person needs six to nine trees to maintain life, assuming...

The concentration index of exports estimates a country’s reliance on a limited group of commodities as its primary source of foreign exchange income. Ranging from 0 (perfect diversification) to 1 (concentrated on a single product)*, a comparison of index scores to the contribution of natural resources to GDP worldwide shows that countries that are resource-rich tend to have less diversified export bases. Last year Iraq’s export concentration index reached 0.97, driven by its export...

In March, US President Donald Trump issued the “Energy Independence” executive order, requiring the US Environmental Protection Agency to rewrite the Clean Power Plan, a keystone of former President Obama’s efforts to address climate change. According to experts from the Trump administration, rejecting federal support for alternative energy and delaying the full transition of the US economy to renewable resources will reduce the US budget by approximately 18 percent. According to Trump, his...

In 2016, just 1 percent of the world's population owned more than 50 percent of the world's wealth. According to the data from the Credit Suisse Research Institute, inequlity of world wealth continues to grow every year. The Institute's assessment is based on a global analysis of national wealth—defined as the value of the financial assets plus real estate (housing) owned by the households, less their debts—and use of the Gini Index, a traditional measure of income distribution and, thereby,...

The 2017 NCAA Tournament has come to the Final Four: South Carolina vs Gonzaga and Oregon vs North Carolina. To predict which teams will win the Final Four match ups and the 2017 NCAA Championship, we once again turned to the data. Knoema's prediction: North Carolina wins the NCAA championship after defeating Oregon in the Final Four and South Carolina in the championship game. We base our predictions on the Championship Tournament Statistics from the NCAA. We developed an indicator of a...

Video games have grown in popularity to become one of the most popular forms of free time activities. Four out of five US households own a device used to play video games, according to research published in 2015 by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA). And, it’s not only students or stereotypical school-age guys participating in video games: the average game player in the US is 35 years old. For some players, video games are not only a pastime but also a way to earn money by...

There is much love to be found in relationships between pets and their owners. And, as love influences our lives for the better, so do our pets make us happier. According to one psychological study, pet ownership improves people's happiness in a meaningful way because relationships with pets complement human relationships rather than substituting one for the other. In essence, pets increase the total happiness an owner can possibly experience. Another medical study suggests that people...

It will of course require more than a bronzed statue of a strong-willed girl taking on the bull of Wall Street to force a sustained and amplified role for women in the upper echelons of the corporate world. But, how far have we come globally in opening c-suites and corporate board rooms to women? On average, during the period from 2008 to 2014, the participation rate of women on corporate boards increased in most of the publicly traded corporations included in major equity indices. Some...

(April 2017) Deterioration in the real interest rate of an economy can lead to an economic downturn. In essence, if inflation rates exceed the interest rates on lending, the profitability of commercial banks is eroded and lending to businesses and individuals dries up. As a result, the production and consumption of goods and services by these would-be borrowers falters. Most economies at some point experience negative real interest rates. During the 2014-2015 period, Argentina, Japan, Mexico,...

It is assumed that births are unevenly distributed throughout any given year, with the distribution influenced by such factors as climate, culture, and major economic and social events. But, is there evidence for this hypothesis? We at Knoema believe that the best evidence starts with data. So, we collected demographic statistics on the number of births monthly from January 2009 through December 2015 for two countries—Russia and the United States—to see what the data could tell us. The data...

Every year Forbes publishes a list of nearly 80 people who make the world turn. The annual list is made up of presidents, prime ministers, CEOs, spiritual leaders, and some of the world's richest people. In today's viz, we share the most recent results and some of the underlying data behind the ranking. The information corresponds to the four dimensions Forbes uses to assess candidates: Power over people. Or, the ability to influence lives. This power dimension is inherent to the position of...

Deaths by drug overdose have surged in the US in recent years, reaching what some call epidemic levels in select states and among certain segments of the US population. Drug overdose deaths in the United States have increased three-fold since 1999 from roughly 17,000 deaths to about 52,500 deaths in 2015, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Over the same period, the overdose death rate increased from 6 to 16 deaths per 100,000 people, which means that it grew...

Even as the design of cars become increasingly safety focused and even automated, speed, texting, and driving while under the influence contribute to a rising number of deaths from motor vehicle crashes, particularly in the United States. Asian car manufacturers nearly swept the 2016 motor vehicle safety rankings by the US Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), securing nine of the top 10 spots. Only Daimler's (Germany) Mercedes-Benz GLE-Class joined Toyota, Hyundai, Subaru, and Honda...

The Russian health-care system is one of the least efficient in the world, but how inefficient is it? As low as it gets within the universe measured by the Health-Care Efficiency Index from Bloomberg. This year’s Index scored Russia as the least efficient of the 55 countries covered. Jordan, Colombia, Azerbaijan and Brazil rounded out the bottom five, with the US not far behind, scoring 50th in the ranking. The index evaluates data for countries with populations of 5 million people or more,...

Sustained swings in commodity prices attract the attention of a variety of people around the world from traders, researchers, and analysts to policymakers and interested citizens. Commodity prices respond to changes in demand and supply forces as well as irrational exuberance of the markets. In today’s viz we opt to set aside price theory to focus instead on uncovering the largest price changes of 2016 for a selection of internationally traded commodities as well as the largest historic prices...

Dying might be too strong, but an industry in recession would not be an exaggeration. Data suggests traditional news outlets have not yet reinvented themselves sufficiently within the evolving sphere of Internet and social media news services to recapture the revenue stream the industry once derived from largely print media. According to the latest data from the Pew Research Center, weekday newspaper circulation fell by seven percent year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2015 while Sunday...

February of this year is notable for the fact that the British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, is celebrating her sapphire anniversary, marking 65 years on the British throne. She has reigned as queen of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom since 6 February 1952. Elizabeth II is not only the first monarch in British history to celebrate the sapphire anniversary, surpassing Queen Victoria who ruled for 64 years, but her reign marks a multitude of other records globally. Elizabeth...

News headlines around the world inundate us with stories about terrorism, conflict, social unrest, plane crashes, natural disasters, global economic crises and more, always more. One might even think that 2016 was the worst year ever for humanity. But, was it? At Knoema, we let the data speak for itself. We have collected the most frequently updated and the most up-to-date statistics from reliable sources to take a practical view of the state of the world and how it has changed over the last...

During the year, we published our infographic stories to keep you in touch with the most interesting and essential facts derived from the world's seemingly never-ending maze of statistics. In today's special year-end edition, we present the most popular Viz of the Day's of 2016, starting with #1, 'When Will the Population of India Surpass That of China?'

The economic divide among countries worldwide carries over into patterns of land purchases and sales. The United States and large economies and trading markets of Asia and the Middle East represent at least 30 percent of global land purchases since 2000, according to the LandMatrix, an independent land monitoring initiative. In contrast, the largest sellers of land globally include Russia—also among the top buyers—as well as developing countries of Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin...

On November 8, US citizens will go to the polls to elect the 45th president of the United States. Predictions of which ticket will win the election and by what margin abound. These predictions should, but do not always, have one thing in common: data. If global events of this decade teach us anything, it’s that seemingly small challenges to the status quo, local sentiment globalized by social media, and many other “unpredictables” can turn the tide quickly and irrevocably. Data, new and old,...

ExxonMobil has yet again taken the top spot in the annual Global Energy Company Ranking by S&P Global Platts. While few were surprised that the assets, revenue, profits, and return on investment capital for the world’s largest public oil and gas producer earned it the 12th consecutive top ranking, the company hot on Exxon’s heels was a surprise: Korea Electric Power Corp (KEPCO). Look no further that oil and gas market fundamentals to understand how KEPCO moved up the ranks. The 2016...

ETH Zurich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, claimed the top spot in the 2016-2017 Times Higher Education World University Ranking of computer science institutions based on its strong performance across all three pillars of the overall score. In teaching alone, the university gained three positions since last year’s ranking. The university is now the only institution from outside the US and the UK to emerge among the top 10 in the overall world university ranking and the top 5 in one...

On April, International Monetary Fund released the new edition of its World Economic Outlook (WEO). According to the updated estimates, global economic growth in 2018 will grow to 3.94 percent from 3.76 percent in 2017. This is a upward revision relative to the previous October's estimate in which world's GDP growth was expected to rise this year. Released twice a year, in October 2017 and April 2018, WEO contains projections of key economic and financial indicators such as GDP, inflation,...

Hurricane Matthew is estimated to be the most powerful storm to hit the Caribbean region in the last decade. The hurricane has already uprooted hundreds of thousands of people in Cuba, Haiti, and Jamaica, according to the latest situation report from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The total population exposed to Matthew Cyclone is more than 10 million people—roughly equal to the total population of Haiti—and half of these people are vulnerable to the...

Despite a global surge in Chinese foreign direct investment during the first half of 2015, the United States remains the leading global financial power based on total foreign direct investment. During 2015, outward US net foreign direct investment (FDI) reached $424.4 billion, an amount that was not only 27.8 percent of total global financial flows but that was also more than four times than the total FDI of China. Moreover, American foreign investment in 2015 was nearly five times its total...

Government policies and global competition that have contributed to regular fluctuation in the total global area under vines - wine vines, that is - have done little to upset France’s and Italy’s continued dominance in wine production. In 2014, France overtook Italy’s worldwide lead the year before, producing nearly 47 million hectoliters (4.6 billion liters) of wine. The Wine Institute and the International Organization of Vine and Wine (OIV) estimate that the globe surface area under vines...

Researchers from the Vienna-based Institute for Comparative Survey Research surveyed 86,000 people from 60 countries worldwide during the period from 2010 to 2014 to gain insight into the relative importance of a select set of values. These values were: family, friends, leisure time, politics, religion, and work. Participants of the World Value Survey (WVS) were asked to define the importance of each value, with ranking options of very important, rather important, not very important and not...

If you are currently practicing medicine, architectural design, petroleum engineering, marketing, or law you are among the lucky in the best-paying career fields in the US. If, however, you are in school now then you should consider occupations such as wind turbine service technician and occupational or physical therapy assistant, fields which sources expect will be fast growing during the next 10 years. If you want both, a high-salary and fast-growing career, move into or study...

Sedentary behavior has become increasingly common in modern society, resulting in a general decrease of physical activity worldwide. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines physical activity as any bodily movement including activities undertaken during leisure, work, home-based activities, and engaging in recreational pursuits. Increased urbanization, which generally increases air pollution, decreases the number of parks and sidewalks, and spurs high-density traffic, often discourages...

McDonald's and Subway are two of the world's largest international fast food restaurant chains. Each company possesses a strong brand and is an established name in the casual eating restaurant industry. With 40,953 locations worldwide, Subway beats out McDonald's as the largest global chain. McDonald's currently has 37,855 locations globally. So, what's behind this difference in global positioning? And, are the differences meaningful beyond a number of restaurants? The most important general...

The decrease in the national crime rate in the US during the past two decades was insufficient to offset the cost to US taxpayers to manage prisons because of the simultaneous increase in the rate of incarceration during the period. Between 1991 and 2013, the national crime rate fell from 1,311 to 689 offenses per 100,000 people. In absolute terms, 8.5 million fewer crimes were committed in 2013 compared to 1991. While the crime rate decreased, the number of state inmates grew by 200 percent...

The total number of registered domain names on the Web reached 326.4 million in the first quarter of 2016, according to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief by Verisign, a US-based domain name and Internet security company. That represents an estimated 12.4 million new domains registered since the fourth quarter of 2015 (3.8% growth) and nearly 32 million since the first quarter of 2015 (11% growth). The combined new URL registrations during the first quarter with a .com or .net extension were...

Gen-Z has overtaken Millennials by nearly 4 million to become the largest generation in the United States. Baby Boomers are the third-largest generation with the population of 69 million persons in 2020. With a current population of around 86 million, the Gen-Z generation is expected to grow to 88 million over the next 20 years because of migration, according to the United Nations' latest World Population Prospects. The boundaries that define generations are not universally agreed, and yet...

The shooting death of Philando Castile by police in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, on 7 July pushed the issue of the use of deadly force by police back into national headlines and ignited protests throughout the United States. Data collected by the Washington Post on US police shootings suggests that the use of deadly force is on the rise. So far this year 512 people have been shot and killed by police in the United States. This is a three-percent increase - or, 16 more deaths - than the same...

Have you ever wondered whether cattle rearing or car driving contributes more to the increase in greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the Earth’s atmosphere, thus exacerbating global warming? Look no further than today’s Viz of the Day, which provides insights on this issue courtesy of a report published by the Food and Agriculture Organization. The data clearly indicates that the modern livestock sector contributes more significantly to global warming than the whole of the transport sector. Among...

Information that EU member states submit annually per Regulation (EC) No 443/2009 to the European Commission and onward to the European Environment Agency (EEA) on newly registered passenger cars provide a unique opportunity to analyze CO2 emissions. The data reveal thought-provoking trends from the perspective of purchasing patterns of lowest to highest emission cars and the corresponding potential contribution of each make and model to air pollution. Premium-class sport cars are the...

In 2015, at least 892 "hate" groups were operating throughout the United States, according to Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). This represents a 14 percent increase from the 784 groups recorded a year before. Still, the current figures are lower than the all-time high in 2011 as traditional organised extremism continues to shrink in favor of collective and individual cyber-based activism. The SPLC defines a hate group as an organised movement that has beliefs or practices that attack or...

Which is the world's largest economy, China or the United States? As is usual in the field of economics, “It depends.” It depends on the methods used to estimate the size of an economy and to compare one economy to another. Despite modern discussions on refining the calculation of gross domestic product (GDP), the standard measure of an economy’s size and performance, to be more inclusive of economic factors that have been ignored to date, such as environmental and natural resource depletion,...

During the first quarter of 2016, 349 million smartphones were sold worldwide, representing moderate growth of 3.9 percent over the same period in 2015, according to the Gartner, Inc. Demand for low-cost smartphone devices in emerging markets contributed the most to sales growth during the quarter. Nowadays, the smartphone market is undergoing significant changes. Existing brands are experiencing growth saturation while emerging ones are becoming top global brands. Samsung lost 1 percent of...

The conversation in the United States has returned to an all too familiar topic, “the latest mass shooting,” a reference to the attack by Stephen Paddock on an outdoor music venue in Las Vegas, Nevada, on the evening of 1 October 2018. Paddock murdered 59 people and injured another 241 people. To date in 2018, the US has experienced 426 mass shootings, in which 362 people have been killed and another 1,289 injured.Data also shows that during the last five years, the deadliest...

The UEFA EURO 2016 kicked off last week with 24 national football teams competing during the next month for the title of continental champion of Europe. One question on the minds of fans, managers, and industry is how much team composition rules have influenced the performance of certain teams. Seventy-two percent of the players on the Spanish national team—winner of the two most recent championships, EURO 2012 and 2008—play for Spanish football clubs. In fact, 11 out of 16 finalist teams...

Drug use among American students is a persistent and serious problem in modern US society. The development of telecommunication services has seriously simplified the process of accessing drugs not only for adults, but even for children, and contributed to a shift in the use patterns of 12th, 10th and 8th graders who regularly use intoxicants. According to the survey conducted by US National Center for Health Statistics, alcohol remains the most "popular" intoxicant among observed groups. The...

(10 December 2021) During the first quarter of 2019 (Apple’s second fiscal quarter), sales of the Apple iPhone decreased by 17 percent compared to the same quarter last year. Since announcing its results for the second fiscal quarter, Apple's share price has also dropped six percent. The iPhone first quarter results were neither unexpected nor the steepest decreases in iPhone revenues the company has faced. Apple reported more dramatic decreases in iPhone revenues during the second and third...

(7 April 2021) With its extensive business network, the Sweden-based multinational clothing retailer H&M has become one of the world's leading fashion companies. After a decade of continuous expansion, adding around 320 stores per year on average, the company's net increase in number of stores (opens minus closures) was only 108 in 2019, and in 2020 it turned negative. H&M had a total of 5,018 stores, in 74 countries across six continents, at the end of 2020. In the last two years,...

In the latest brand report from Forbes, Apple has ranked the world’s most valuable brand again despite the company recording the decline in its revenue during the second quarter. Apple has grabbed the top spot in the Forbes ranking every year since it began valuing the richest brands in 2010. Forbes evaluated more than 200 global brands to determine the final list of the world’s 100 most valuable brands. The brands were required to have more than a token presence in the US, which knocked out...

As of 2014, the global pharmaceutical market was worth about $1 trillion US dollars in sales and is expected to increase by US$300 billion within next two years. The ten largest companies with annual sales over $20 billion controlled over one-third of this market. The biggest pharmaceutical companies by sales according to the 2015 edition of Financial Times Global 500 companies are Jonhson & Johnson, Pfizer, Novartis, Roche, and Merck. First ranked company, Jonhson & Johnson, is...

From antiquity to 2015, about 5.4 billion carats of diamonds have been mined from the Earth's surface. While marketing suggests diamonds are rare, production and related sales trends globally suggest otherwise. During the last two decades, global diamond production averaged 134.6 million carats per year, a total production that exceeded what had previously been produced from the first diamond production records through 1993. In addition, despite relatively weak production of 125 million carats...

The Deloitte UK quarterly CFO Survey illuminates the sentiments and strategies of major corporate users of capital to gauge attitudes related to valuations, risk, and financing. Deloitte provides open access to the current and historical survey results to enable analysis and application of the survey results. The 2016 Q1 responses strongly underscored the business relevance of the UK's upcoming EU referendum on 23 June that will determine the future of the country's EU membership. The survey...

The thousands of people fleeing their homes globally in search of safety have received more policy and media attention recently. There is a critical distinction between refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) and the humanitarian not to mention economic and political consequences of each. Refugees. This is the population fleeing their home countries where violence is raging to other countries in search of protection and assistance. Globally we have witnessed accelerated growth in the...

The Energy Trilemma Index ranks countries in terms of their likely ability to provide sustainable energy policies through the three dimensions of the energy trilemma: Energy security: the effective management of primary energy supply from domestic and external sources, the reliability of energy infrastructure, and the ability of participating energy companies to meet current and future demand. Energy equity: the accessibility and affordability of energy supply across the...

Currently in the United States 78 percent of the total population aged 12+ uses social media sites, which corresponds to about 165 million Americans. Facebook is the most visited social media site, accounting for 43 percent of all US visits. The second most popular social media site is the global video-sharing service YouTube with 22 percent of visits. Together YouTube and Facebook dominate two thirds of the American social media traffic. Reddit, Twitter and Instagram are the next most popular...

Millions of people worldwide are looking forward to the next episode of A Game of Thrones, a television series adaptation of the epic fantasy novel series, A Song of Ice and Fire, by American author George R. R. Martin. Fans are likewise eagerly awaiting the expected release of the sixth book in the series, The Winds of Winter, later this year. Since its first publication in 1996, A Song of Ice and Fire has gained extreme popularity while also accumulating a wealth of criticism. The series'...

The Washington, DC-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has released a database of the so-called Panama Papers - information leaked primarily from Mossack Fonseca, one of the world's leading global law firms providing services of incorporation of offshore entities and headquartered in Panama. The leak is the largest ever of offshore financial records and contains about 11.5 million legal and financial records dating back more than 40 years. The files expose more...

Bitcoin is one of the world's most popular digital currencies, meaning that it is exclusively created and held electronically. But, what do we actually know about digital currencies and the potential of these currencies to replace conventional money? Like conventional money, the major function of a digital currency is to serve as a means of payment, whether that is in exchange for goods or real currency, such as dollars and euros. In addition, similar to how a normal currency's exchange...

The World Values Survey (WVS) examines the changing values of societies and the impact of these changes on social and political life. The WVS is composed of nationally representative surveys conducted in almost 100 countries that represent almost 90 percent of the world’s population. Initiated in 1981, the WVS is the largest non-commercial, cross-national, time series investigation of human beliefs and values ever executed. The survey repository includes interviews with almost 400,000...

In early 2015, the Google Play Market became the largest mobile application platform, surpassing Apple App Store by number of available applications. The Google Play Store currently offers 2,127,612 Android apps. The 2 million milestone was reached in March, 2.5 years after passing the 1 million threshold in July 2013. In April, 58,467 new apps were released in the official Google app store, although the monthly average is closer to 40,000 new apps. Android Market, the former name for Google...

The United States is often criticized for its perceived nonchalance toward air pollution despite persistent statements to the contrary by the current presidential administration. The US remains the number one contributor globally to harmful chemicals in the air, with the fossil-fuel consuming transportation industry being a primary emission source. With more than 250 million vehicles on US roads, the US surpasses even China based on total vehicles in use despite China's much larger...

The World Series is the annual championship held every October by Major League Baseball (MLB). It pits the champion of the American League (AL) against the champion of the National League (NL) in a best-of-7 matchup. A little over two months into the new season, the relative strength of the 30 teams is beginning to come into focus and fans' dreams for their teams to reach the World Series are being tainted by the reality of the season. So, in today's Viz of the Day, we've brought you data for a...

Kobe Bryant, the newly-retired 37 year-old player with the Los Angeles Lakers, was the all-time active scoring leader during the 2015-2016 NBA season. During his 20-year career he scored 33,643 points, surpassing Michael Jordan but falling short of all-time historical scoring leader Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Abdul-Jabbar scored 38,387 points during his 20-season NBA career. Michael Jordan, an iconic figure of world basketball, is ranked fourth by all-time points scored during the regular season....

In 2014, the State of Texas received $5.8 billion in oil and gas production taxes, more tax revenue from oil and gas production than any year since 1978. And, yet, this represented no more than 5.5 percent of the total state tax revenue in 2014, a far cry from the 25.6 percent of the budget these revenues represented back in the early 1980s. The economy of Texas has diversified since the 1980s, attracting investment from major companies in computing, engineering, transportation, and other...

The Financial Secrecy Index (FSI) was launched in November 2015 to provide a ranking of jurisdictions according to their secrecy and the scale of their offshore financial activities. Designed to be politically neutral, the focus of the tool is to expand our understanding of global financial secrecy, tax havens or secrecy jurisdictions, and illicit financial flows or capital flight. The FSI uses a combination of qualitative and quantitative data to create a single measure of each jurisdiction’s...

(29 March 2021) Today Starbucks is the largest coffeehouse company in the world, with 32,938 retail locations as of the first quarter of 2021, followed distantly by coffee shop chains such as Dunkin Donuts with about 10,000 restaurants, Tim Hortons with 4,300 outlets, and Costa Coffee with nearly 1,700 stores worldwide. Starbucks was founded in 1971 in Seattle, Washington, and incorporated on November 4, 1985, to become the publicly traded Starbucks Corporation.Based on the company's...

People are living longer and, in some parts of the world, healthier lives. This represents one of the crowning achievements of the last century but also a significant challenge. Longer lives must be planned for. Societal aging may affect economic growth and many other issues, including the sustainability of families, the ability of states and communities to provide resources for older citizens, and international relations. Preparing financially for longer lives and finding ways to reduce...

The 2016 Stanley Cup playoffs have just kicked off and will run through early June when the fourth and final rounds will take place. Now is a good time to refresh our collective memory of the more than one-century history of the playoffs by looking at the winning teams and how often each team has taken the Stanley Cup home. Here are a few highlights: Top teams - O Canada. The absolute Stanley Cup champion team by number of wins is the Montreal Canadiens, which has won the title 24 times since...

The Global Knowledge Index (GKI) from Knowledge4All has emerged as a replacement to the World Bank's well known Knowledge Economy Index, 2012. The purpose of the GKI is to capture the multidimensional nature of knowledge (often linked to related concepts such as 'knowledge economy' or 'knowledge society') and help guide policymakers and researchers in their efforts to foster knowledge-based societies and bridge knowledge gaps that help propel development and economic growth.The GKI is a joint...

Throughout human history, migration has been a courageous expression of the individual’s will to overcome adversity and to live a better life. Today, globalization, together with advances in communications and transportation, has greatly increased the number of people who have the desire and the capacity to move to other places. This new era has created challenges and opportunities for societies throughout the world. It also has served to underscore the clear linkage between migration and...

The Europe 2020 strategy, adopted by the European Council on 17 June 2010, is the EU's agenda for growth and jobs for the current decade. It emphasises smart, sustainable and inclusive growth as a way to overcome the structural weaknesses in Europe's economy, improve its competitiveness and productivity and underpin a sustainable social market economy.

May 2016 - The Syrian Civil War is an ongoing multi-sided armed conflict with international interventions taking place in Syria. The unrest began in the early spring of 2011 within the context of the Arab Spring protests as nationwide protests erupted against President Bashar al-Assad's government. Government forces responded with violent crackdowns. The mass protests gradually morphed into an armed rebellion after months of military sieges. The estimated number of deaths in the conflict vary...

While everyone at one point in time either experiences or fears losing a job, it's probably a remarkable few who knows how taxes and social benefits in the countries they live would affect their unemployment income. We have created a simple tax-benefit calculator, based on data from the OECD, which provides information on unemployment benefits. For each country, you can choose from a selection of different family types and earnings levels to better understand the expected unemployment benefits...

Sunday's suicide attack in Lahore has so far claimed at least 72 lives, making it the deadliest single attack the country has suffered in 2015 or 2016, according to data from the South Asia Terrorism Portal. Today's Viz of the Day provides a unique collection of visualizations to support a closer examination of the broader trends in terrorism-related violence in Pakistan. The data below shows that total fatalities from terrorism-related events have declined steadily in Pakistan since 2009, a...

Evolving threats to civil aviation will almost certainly drive demand for investment in new security technologies to detect and mitigate security threats while leaving total global air passenger traffic relatively unscathed because of strong growth drivers. Industry analysts anticipate that the global aviation sector's growth in 2016 will exceed the 6.5 percent growth in passenger traffic last year. Drivers for growth include increasing air traffic volumes in China, South East Asia, and the...

Auto dealerships purchase cars direct from manufacturers to resell to final consumers. But, vehicles may spend days, weeks, and even months in some cases in dealers' inventories before being purchased by the ultimate owner. Dealers seek the fastest inventory turnover possible, making 'days to turn'—the number of days a vehicle was in dealer's inventory before being sold—a critical metric for dealers. In 2016, Subarus were the quickest sold automobiles in the world: dealers required an average...

The reach of terrorism has changed dramatically over the last decade. The simplest review of the statistics in today's Viz of the Day provides perspective on the geography of terrorism then and now: In 2015, 12 countries, spanning five regions of the world - Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and South and Southeast Asia - suffered terrorist attacks that killed at least 50 people in a single event. In contrast, in 2006 only three countries - India, Iraq, and Sri Lanka - suffered losses of 50...

Housing affordability and its impact on middle-income households worldwide is emerging as a major concern throughout the developed world. According to the London-based consultancy Knight Frank, housing prices in the world's largest cities rose by 3 percent on average during the last year. The strongest growth was observed in Turkey where average housing prices increased by 18 percent in the last year. In contrast, across the Black Sea in the Ukraine, property prices declined by 12 percent last...

Despite their collective expertise, markets are apparently destined to repeat history as irrational exuberance is followed by equally irrational despair. Periodic bouts of economic chaos are the inevitable result. Financial crises have been an unfortunate part of the industry since its beginnings. Bankers and financiers readily admit that in a business so large, so global, and so complex, it is naive to think such events can ever be avoided. A look at a number of financial crises over the last...

Zambia is a copper-rich African country that just three years ago was the darling of international investors seeking to expand their mineral portfolios. Mining investment - encouraged by privatization of the copper mines in the late 1990s - and the copper price boom that started in late 2008 served to support the sustained economic growth the country had achieved since implementing measures in 2004 to support greater fiscal discipline. Leading multinational mining companies, including...

While not universally accepted, there is growing global recognition that climate change poses serious risks to our health and environment, including risks to infrastructure, the food supply chain, and death due to extreme weather, among many others. The Earth has warmed nearly 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1880, which has seriously damaged our planet's environment. Today's Viz of the Day, based on the fidings from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, examines how various factors, both...

The worst drought to affect South Africa in the last century is further damaging the economic strength of the county's sugar sector. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, South Africa was expected to harvest 1.61 million metric tons of sugar during the 2016/2017 marketing year, a decrease of 5.5 percent from the previous marketing year and the lowest marketed-yield since 1995. Sugar producers are already grappling with competition from cheap imports, forcing some mills to...

Since January 2015, more than 1,000 Indian startup companies attracted funding from international investors, with private equity firms making up nearly 98 percent of new investment, according to data from Trak.in, a local business news and opinion company. Private equity firms - led by Alibaba, SoftBank, and Steadview Capital Management - invested a total of about $9.5 billion during the period. In contrast, data from TNW news indicates that in 2010, Indian startups brought in only $13 million...

World AIDS Day is held annually on December 1 to encourage people worldwide to unite in the fight against HIV, show their support for people living with HIV, and to commemorate people who have died from HIV/AIDS. World AIDS Day was the first ever global health day named, held for the first time in 1988. Globally there are an estimated 37 million people who have the virus.Despite the virus only being identified in 1984, more than 35 million people have died of HIV or AIDS, making it one of the...

Global oil production remains strong even as some leading industry forecasts suggest that global economic conditions will override low global oil prices to constrain oil demand growth this year. Some leading OPEC producers, including Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, are producing at or near record levels, largely offsetting production declines from several OPEC and non-OPEC producers. Many of these OPEC members have relatively low operating costs or are on the upside of years of development...

If you’re a frequent international traveler, you probably look forward to the next stamp that will be added to the collection of pages inside. But as you approach airport security, clutching the document in your hand, have you ever wondered just how powerful it is? The answer depends on your passport’s country of origin. A tool called Passport Index aims to help curious travelers rank countries based on how easily their citizens can travel the globe. According to the system, passports...

The Pew Research Center conducted a survey in January 2016 that revealed nuanced statistics on the familiarity of Americans with Muslims and their perceptions of anti-Americanism among Muslims in the United States. Only about half of Americans claimed to personally know someone who is Muslim. Blacks, young people and those with a college degree were more likely than other groups to say they personally know someone who is Muslim. This may be explained, in part, by the demographics of Muslims...

Almost every four years it’s a leap year. Leap years have one extra day due to an astronomical fact about the earth’s revolution around the sun. It takes roughly 365 and one quarter days to go around the sun, however the standard calendar year lasts only 365 days. Were we to ignore the extra quarter of a day, strange things would eventually happen to our seasons - like winter and snow in July. To counteract the accumulation of additional quarters of a day, theGregorian calendar adds an extra...

Make better educated travel decisions with the price index series presented in today's Viz of the Day. The figures highlight common travel-related expenditures, ranging from accommodation, transportation, and urban transit to beer and soccer, and may well help individual travelers to better gauge the relative cost of travel to their destinations of choice.

As part of the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) Energy and Financial Markets Initiative, the EIA is moving beyond its traditional coverage of the physical fundamentals of global oil markets to understand global energy prices moments. In addition to assessing factors such as energy consumption, production, inventories, spare production capacity, and geopolitical risks, EIA will now examine other influences, such as futures market trading activity, commodity investment, exchange rates,...

With the slump in crude oil and natural gas prices dozens of North American oil and gas companies have commenced Chapter 11 bankruptcy. According to the law firm Haynes & Boone, 42 companies in exploration & production (E&P) and 39 companies in middle-market oilfield services have filed for bankruptcy protection during 2015 in the US and Canada. The total amount of aggregate debt involved in filed cases reached $17.2 billion for E&P and $5.3 billion for oilfield services...

Liquefied natural gas (LNG) represents a significant component of the energy consumption of many countries and accounts for about one third of total internationally traded gas. Total global LNG production (liquefaction) nameplate capacity grew to 320 million tonnes per annum (MTPA), or 435 billion cubic meters, by the end of 2015 from 119 MTPA in 2000. The US shale production boom and recovery of global oil prices from 2010 to 2012 after the global financial crisis created an attractive...

The US Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) recently published the "Seven Big Summits to Watch in 2016." The visualizations that follow use publicly available data to provide context about each event on the CFR list.

2015 was a momentous year for Nigeria. The general elections held in March brought about the first democratic transition of power from a ruling party to an opposition party, heightening expectations for meaningful political change. The new Government is establishing itself during a very challenging time, however, marked by a sharp, sustained decline in global oil prices and continuing violence in the country's northeast. Given the high dependency of Nigeria on oil revenues, the recent sharp...

05 Jan 2016 - As 2016 begins there is still no sign of peace in Burundi. Positions are becoming entrenched, murders continue and the long-awaited dialogue between the government, opposition and civil society groups is faltering. Burundi's government will not take part in peace talks scheduled for Wednesday with the opposition, a senior official said, casting doubts on efforts to end months of violence. "No dialogue tomorrow neither on January 16 as many may think, because there has been no...

The cheapest city to drink a beer is Krakow, Poland, according to the results of 2015 GoEuro Beer Price Index. The average price of a 33cl bottle of beer in this Polish city came in at only $1.66. In contrast, you'll likely not be surprised to learn that Geneva, Switzerland, has become the most expensive city worldwide to grab a beer, with an average beer price of $6.32. You can avoid a costly beer in Geneva if you shop for your beer in local supermarkets, where prices are roughly one sixth of...

Christmas is celebrated in the United States on the 25th of December. Christmas is a civil holiday and is celebrated by an increasing number of non-Christians, and is an integral part of the holiday season. Christmas is typically the largest economic stimulus for many nations around the world as sales increase dramatically in almost all retail areas. The United States' retail industry generated over three trillion U.S. dollars during the holidays in 2013. These holiday sales reflected about...

Star Wars is an American epic space opera franchise centered on a film series created by George Lucas. It chronicles the rise and fall of Anakin Skywalker "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away." The Force Awakens remains on course to beat box office records worldwide after posting $14.1 million on Wednesday when it opened in Europe, coupled with an estimated record $50 million on Thursday in showings in select US cities.

In a perfect world, where access to technology and the wealth are equally distributed, the GDP of each country would be proportional to its population. In the real world that relationship exists on average (see the dot charts below) but with significant deviations from the trend. Many developed countries, being relatively less populous than their developing counterparts, have high levels of GDP, while the GDPs of less-developed countries, especially in Africa, are disproportionally...

Well-functioning legal and judicial institutions are critical to economic growth in modern economies. They define the rules by which markets function, and they provide a means to resolve disputes, protect economic and social rights, and hold governments accountable for their actions. By promoting investment, good judicial institutions can contribute to economic growth and development. “The centrality of a strong justice mechanism lies in its essential contribution to fostering economic...

Nigeria's transformation into a major oil producer in the late 1960s overwhelmed its status as one of the most promising agricultural producers in the world. Between 1960 and 1969, net exports of agricultural products constituted 6 to 7 percent of Nigeria's GDP and the country was able to feed itself. But as the country began to depend on oil to drive growth and development, Nigeria's status as an agricultural powerhouse steeply declined, and by 1975 it became a net importer of agricultural...

On Friday, 4 December OPEC decided to forgo an artificial - and rarely upheld - ceiling on crude oil output and maintain current crude oil production volumes, even as markets brace for an increase of Iranian oil in global markets. The decision by OPEC left Venezuela - one of the members of the cartel most seriously affected by the decline in oil prices - without any hope for improvement in external economic conditions right before the elections. And what a historic elections these were, with...

The World Energy Outlook is the International Energy Agency's annual flagship publication that provides long-term projections of energy demand, production, trade and investment, by fuel and by region, under several policy scenarios*. These projections currently extend to 2040. WEO-2015 presents three main scenarios that are differentiated by their energy and climate policy assumptions, with the future energy picture that they portray varying significantly, and introduces a forth in this latest...

The Russian Government recently prohibited the import of 17 food items, including apples, grapes, oranges, poultry, tomatoes and other fruit and vegetables, from Turkey and banned charter flights between the two countries in response to Turkey shooting down a Russian SU-24 on 24 November. Today's Viz of the Day illustrates the current merchandise trade flows between Turkey and the Russian Federation and provides insight into possible losses to each economy as a result of the Russian embargo.

As of 2010, the United States had a total resident population of almost 310 million with a median age of 37.2 years. The largest population group, however, was the 45-59 age bracket with a population of 22.7 million followed by the 50-59 group with 22.3 million. The smallest age bracket, unsurprisingly, was the 85 and older group with just 5.5 million. The states with the youngest populations in 2010 based on median age were geographically dispersed. Utah was the youngest with a median age of...

Today's Viz of the Day reveals the dominant role of Russian exports, investment, and tourism into Turkey, begging the question: how will new directives from the Kremlin regarding relations with Turkey affect not only diplomatic relations but also the state of the Turkish economy?

Data from the International Energy Agency's monthly Oil Market Report is now available through the fourth quarter of 2016 for most indicators. Source: IEA Oil Market Report

In today's Viz of the Day we highlight global trends in mineral production. The visualizations include production figures for more than 70 mineral commodities in 175 countries, covering a five-year period from 2009 to 2013. Here are a few highlights: According to 2013 data compiled by the British Geological Survey in the World Mineral Production 2009-13, production of bauxite experienced the largest annual increase, growing by nearly 16 percent during the period from 2012-2013. Mine...

With more than 2 million SDCC tickets/badges sold over the years, what started as “San Diego’s Golden State Comic-Minicon”, a one-day convention in the basement of the U.S. Grant Hotel on March 21, 1970, has since grown to an important showcase for comic art, film, and science fiction. Comic-Con International: San Diego returns to the San Diego Convention Center in 2017, beginning with Preview Night on Wednesday, July 19, and running Thursday, July 20 through Sunday, July 23. 2017 marks the...

While the Maldives may be best known worldwide as a picturesque vacation destination, on 4 November President Abdullah Yameen declared a 30-day state of emergency, an order he swiftly revoked less than a week later following widespread international condemnation and concerns about its strong impact on the country's tourism industry. An explosion on the president's boat in late September is being linked to the decision to impose a state of emergency as well as to the dismissal or arrest of...

Civil war in Syria has resulted in more than four million refugees fleeing the country, of which 1.8 million have found refuge in Turkey, making it the largest refugee-hosting country worldwide. Research by The World Bank finds that the refugees, who overwhelmingly do not have work permits, result in the large-scale displacement of informal, low-educated, female Turkish workers, especially in agriculture. While there is net displacement, the inflow of refugees also creates higher-wage formal...

For the last 14 years (2001-2014), the number of annual space launch attempts has increased, according to the Space Launch Statistics dataset. The number of space launches increased by almost 50 percent during the period. The largest operational launch facility is located in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, but leased to Russia. During the period from 2001 to 2014, the Baikonur Cosmodrome made 271 successful attempts, while the second most active facility, Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, initiated half as...

Now, after more than three decades, the Chinese government is ending its controversial one-child policy. Originally implemented in 1980 to curb its rapid population growth, China’s one-child policy has witnessed a fertility rate decline from 2.7 births per woman in 1981 to 1.6 births in 2015. Those who backed the one-child policy claimed it led to 300 million fewer births and lifted 200-400 million people out of poverty. Yet, the one-child policy has taken a toll, with more than 336 million...

In today's Viz of the Day we present a unique interactive visualization designed on the basis of Akamai Q2 2015 State of the Internet Report, which shows the main trends in the average and peak internet connection speeds across various countries during the 5-year period from Q1 2010 to Q2 2015. The dashboard clearly shows that the average connection speed has increased significantly during the previous five years in all countries, reaching a world average of 5.1 megabits per second (Mbps) in...

Depression is a common mental disorder, characterized by sadness, loss of interest or pleasure, feelings of guilt or low self-worth, disturbed sleep or appetite, feelings of tiredness, and poor concentration. The most spread form of depression is Major Depressive Episode (MDE). MDE can be long-lasting or recurrent, substantially impairing an individual’s ability to function at work or school or cope with daily life. When mild, people can be treated without medicines but when depression is...

Global intelligence on the future of the world in the palm of your hand Description: The Center for Future Studies NEF of the Catholic University of Sao Paulo (PUC-SP), Brazilian Node of the Milennium Project, will be presenting the SOF 2015-2016. The Millennium Project connects futurists around the world to improve global foresight. It is now an independent non-profit global participatory think tank of futurists, scholars, business planners, and policy makers who work for international...

It’s estimated that up to 7,000 different languages are spoken around the world. Ninety percent of these languages are used by less than 100,000 people. Over a million people converse in 150-200 languages. The world's five most widely spoken languages by number of native speakers are: Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, English, Hindi and Arabic (all dialects). English is the most widespread language in the world by number of ethnic groups in different countries who use it as a mother tongue. In...

21 October 2015 - If life seems more rushed than ever, you might be surprised to learn that we actually have more leisure time than we did 40 years ago, and quite a bit more. So why does it feel like we have so much less? It might be because we waste half of all our leisure time watching television. Globally, people devote more than 2.5 hours a day to viewing television programs despite the diversity of leisure options. How people spend their leisure time has significantly changed and is...

For additional information on elections please visit each country's respective electoral commission web site: Nigeria - The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)

The World Bank EdStats All Indicator Query holds around 3,000 internationally comparable indicators that describe education access, progression, completion, literacy, teachers, population, and expenditures. The indicators cover the education cycle from pre-primary to vocational and tertiary education. The query also holds learning outcome data from international and regional learning assessments (e.g. PISA, TIMSS, PIRLS), equity data from household surveys, and projection/attainment data to...

Every poor person in the United States would get a one-time payout of $1,736 if Bill Gates—the richest US citizen—distributed the total value of his assets equally among the US population living below the poverty line. This data is based on analysis from the Robin Hood Index, created by Bloomberg, which compares the net worth of the richest billionaires in 42 countries with the number of individuals below the national poverty line in those same countries to show the theoretical gain to the poor...

25 September 2015 - During the first half of 2015, the United States faced its worst outbreak on record of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza in poultry (HPAI, informally known as bird flu). According to the World Organisation For Animal Health, since December 2014 in the US nearly 65 million birds were susceptible to HPAI. In its recent report, titled Fall 2015 HPAI Preparedness and Response Plan, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) said that 7.5 million turkeys and 42.1 million egg-layer...

Ebola virus disease (EVD), formerly known as Ebola haemorrhagic fever, is a severe, often fatal illness in humans. The virus is transmitted to people from wild animals and spreads in the human population through human-to-human transmission. The average EVD case fatality rate is around 50%. Case fatality rates have varied from 25% to 90% in past outbreaks. Ebola virus disease (EVD) first appeared in 1976 in 2 simultaneous outbreaks, one in Nzara, Sudan, and the other in Yambuku, Democratic...

23 September 2015 - Vatican City is a unique state in the world with a far from traditional economy that renders traditional economic analysis nearly useless against it. After all, GDP per capita is about $4 million compared to less than $100,000 in top ranked Norway. That's not a typo. Vatican City is run by donations made by the Roman Catholic Church and Christians from around the world; the latter are commonly referred to as Peter's Pence. While it is known that a special Vatican City...

17 September 2015 - Knoema presents below a series of visuals that provide insight into the economic and socio-demographic conditions in Haiti under President Michel Martelly compared to pervious presidents. We invite you to explore the data through our interactive visualizations to draw out your own insights. Following are a few highlights we found noteworthy: While several key economic indicators - such as GDP per capita and unemployment - remained relatively unchanged throughout the three...

The US Deparment of Agriculture's 10-year international projections cover supply, demand, and trade for major agricultural crops and meats for selected countries and global totals. The projections provide foreign-country detail supporting USDA’s long-term projections released in February each year. According to USDA, over the next several years, the agricultural industry will adjust to lower prices for most farm commodities. Lower prices will likely lead to reductions in planted acerage. Lower...

12 Sept - On Friday, Goldman Sachs slashed its oil price forecast for 2016 from $62/bbl to $49.5/bbl for the international benchmark Brent crude oil and from $57/bbl to $45/bbl for WTI crude, allowing for a short-term price decline to 20 US$/bbl. The sharp revision has attracted considerable media attention, however, Goldman's outlook for 2017 remained unchanged. According to Goldman Sachs Commodities Research, oil market oversupply has already peaked in Q2 2015 and will gradually decline in...

What has EU membership meant for the UK? Could the UK economy withstand a deterioration in its link to the European economy? Have existing EU policies that some argue disproportionately favor founding EU members - read France, Germany, and Italy - been more harmful than helpful to the UK economy? It's not only the citizens and government of the UK seeking answers to these questions and many more like them but trading partners, business competitors and investors, and others with economic,...

Today there is widespread recognition that drugs, together with organized crime, jeopardize the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. It is increasingly clear that drug control must become an essential element of our joint efforts to achieve peace, security and development. The World Drug Report documents developments in global drug markets and tries to explain the factors that drive them. Its analysis of trends and emerging challenges informs national and international drug and...

7 September 2015 - Africa’s power sector struggles under low access and insufficient capacity. Only 35 percent of the population of Sub-Sahara Africa, including South Africa, has access to electricity while more than 90 percent of the populations of Burundi, Chad, Liberia, Malawi, and South Sudan lack access to a power grid. Most African countries, except South Africa, face severe power generation capacity deficits even compared to international peers of similar economic size. For example,...

Unprecedented changes to the international tax system are expected over the next five years. An OECD/G20 global campaign to address tax base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) is in full swing and could dramatically alter the tax landscape. According to a November 2014 update from the OECD: BEPS refers to corporate tax planning strategies that exploit gaps and mismatches in tax rules between countries to artificially shift profits to low or no-tax locations characterized by little or no...

Most innovation rankings are popularity contests based on past performance or editorial whims. We set out to create something very different with the World’s Most Innovative Companies list, using the wisdom of the crowd. Our method relies on investors’ ability to identify firms they expect to be innovative now and in the future. Companies are ranked by their innovation premium: the difference between their market capitalization and a net present value of cash flows from existing businesses...

The United States government continues to monitor the adherence of China to a bilateral agreement signed in September 2015 to refrain from conducting or knowingly supporting cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property with the intent of providing competitive advantage to companies or commercial sectors. The US Government had reportedly begun developing a package of economic sanctions last fall against Chinese entities and individuals who have benefited from corporate and government or...

Conventional wisdom suggests a negative relationship exists between corruption and economic activity. However, some studies* have shown that fraud could serve as a fount of innovation harnessed to more positive outcomes. Even if at the firm-level bribes sometimes present a more efficient alternative to introduce innovative products to markets, economy-wide data prove that a reduction of corruption and administrative barriers is crucial to enable the advantages of a competitive business...

On average, nations with higher rates of undernourishment also have lower prevalences of people who are overweight or obese. But, this intuitive correlation exists only on the average. Real-world data shows large deviations across countries from this trend. Many developing countries with relatively high levels of undernourishment also have high rates of overweight and obesity at the same time. For example: In the Comoro Islands, 65 percent of the population is undernourished, making it one of...

The monthly Oil Market Report (OMR) from the International Energy Agency provides extensive analysis on world oil market trends as well as projections for oil supply and demand 12-18 months ahead. Developed from information obtained from the extensive IEA network of contacts with government and industry, it is the only regular, short-term analysis of the global oil industry available and has become an authoritative source for government officials and market and industry strategists...

On Monday (24 August), global financial markets suffered heavy losses. Markets started to show weakness earlier this summer, weighed down by concerns about a slowdown of China's economy and fears of economic contagion from a potential Greek exit. On Monday morning, Chinese government efforts to inject liquidity to support the tumbling market failed. China's Shanghai Composite Stock Index closed the trading session with a record 8.5 percent loss, erasing all gains made since the start of the...

China’s devaluation of its national currency in early August should make foreign markets even more enticing to Chinese investors. Total Chinese foreign investment and construction contracts since 2005 already exceed $1.65 trillion, with new investment in 2016 on pace to top $170 billion. The question becomes: where will Chinese investors take their money next? Increased industry-based diversity could soon overtake a previous geographic diversity for Chinese investments abroad. As energy...

China’s devaluation of its national currency in early August should make foreign investment by Chinese investors relatively more attractive. Total Chinese foreign investment and construction contracts since 2005 already exceed $1.1 trillion, with new investment in 2015 on pace to top $100 billion. The question becomes: where will Chinese investors take their money next? Increased industry-based diversification could soon overtake a previous focus on geographic diversity for Chinese investments...

The Global Firepower database published earlier this year provides an interesting perspective on the relative military strength of the former-Soviet Union (FSU) member states bordering Russia as compared to Russia. The contrast is so sharp that any of the FSU countries would almost certainly be unable to defend themselves from Russian military advancement without the direct involvement of NATO or other allied forces. The Baltic States, Georgia, and Ukraine combined spend fifteen times less on...

During the mid-to-late 2000s, Nigeria struggled to reign in the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, better known simply as MEND. MEND is a militant group based in the southwest of Nigeria in the Niger Delta, Nigeria's primary onshore oil production region. The group sought increased economic benefits for residents of the Niger Delta from the country's oil production and reparations for destruction of the environment by foreign oil companies. The group's guerrilla warfare tactics...

On 17 August, as Riek Machar, South Sudan rebel leader, and Pagan Amum, the head of South Sudan's ruling party, signed an agreement in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to end the 20-month civil war in sub-Sahara Africa's youngest country, South Sudan's President Salva Kiir, walked away, demanding a 15-day extension to confer with officials in Juba. South Sudan's civil war erupted in December 2013 following a political dispute between Kiir and Machar, his then deputy. Tens of thousands have died and more...

In the summer of 2014, global oil prices began what would become one of the sharpest rates of decline in years. By January 2015, global oil prices plunged to the lowest values since the depths of the 2009 global recession. After only a slight reprieve, August rolled around and Brent, a global oil price benchmark grade, was trading still lower at around $49 per barrel, a roughly 55 percent decrease since July 2014. The American benchmark crude oil, West Texas Intermediate (WTI), was trading at...

The South African economy exhibited weak quarter-on-quarter real GDP growth earlier this year and faces high and rising unemployment, weak domestic demand, and falling market prices on key export commodities. Accelerated growth is on the horizon for South Africa, however, according to consensus forecasts of multiple major international agencies, even if at a slower rate than other large sub-saharan African economies. African countries collectively are expected to be the most rapidly growing...

On 11 August 2015, the People’s Bank of China announced a 1.9 percent devaluation of the Chinese yuan by resetting the daily band within which it is traded. The move by China's central bank generated broad turbulence in global commodity and financial markets and could have important implications for the world’s largest economies. Tuesday's adjustment was the largest single-day devaluation since 1994 and comes just over a month ahead of a vote at the IMF to make the renminbi - commonly...

According to the UN, the world's urban population will increase by about 60 percent by 2050, from 4 million people in 2015 to 6.3 million in 2050. In other words, by 2050, the UN expects that two out of three people in the world will live in an urban area. In contrast, during the early part of the twentieth century the majority of the world's population lived in rural areas. Some countries will remain rural population dominant, particularly in Africa. However, the UN expects that Africa will...

The US dollar strengthened recently to the highest level in the past 10 years against a broad range of currencies. Falling commodity prices force "emerging" and "commodity-dependent" countries to weaken their currencies to maintain competitiveness. However, trying to improve export competitiveness through currency devaluation can induce a sharp rise in inflation rates. Enforced tightening of monetary policy also reduces economic growth because high interest rates stifle new business activity....

Personal incomes vary greatly among counties across the United States. While in New York County, New York, the average personal income per capita was about $122,000 in 2013, in Telfair, Georgia it was seven times lower at only $17,500. In the poorest 100 counties in the US, per capita income is less than $26,500 ($2,208 per month) on average. The level of economic well-being strongly correlates with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, the former Food Stamp Program) participation...

A sovereign default is the failure or refusal of the government of a sovereign state to pay back its debt in full. Cessation of due payments (also euphemistically termed receivables) may either be accompanied by formal declaration (repudiation) of a government not to pay (or only partially pay) its debts, or it may be unannounced. Defaults have typically involved low-income and emerging-market economies, although recent cases include advanced-economy sovereigns. Until recently, there have been...

The Global Competitiveness Report 2014-2015 assesses the competitiveness landscape of 144 economies, providing insight into the drivers of their productivity and prosperity. The report remains the most comprehensive assessment of national competitiveness worldwide, providing a platform for dialogue between government, business and civil society about the actions required to improve economic prosperity. Competitiveness is defined as the set of institutions, policies and factors that determine...

The 2017 Global Peace Index reflects the reality of war and peace today with Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq ranking as the least peaceful countries of the 161 evaluated for the index. The United States experienced the greatest decline in the index since last year, slipping 11 places to rank 114th, directly following Armenia and Rwanda and preceding El Salvador and China. But, what’s in the index? The Global Peace Index is comprised of 23 indicators grouped into three broad themes: the level of...

The World Bank has published the 2017 edition of its dataset: "Population Estimates and Projections." This database presents population and other demographic estimates and projections for the period 1960 to 2050. The data are disaggregated by age-group and gender and cover approximately 200 economies. The data also include information about fertility, mortality, and population by age. The world population will increase by approximately 30 percent during the next 35 years, from 7.3 billion to...

Starting in 2001, the Global Information Technology Report series published by the World Economic Forum in partnership with Cornell University and INSEAD measured the drivers of the information and communications technology (ICT) revolution using the Networked Readiness Index (NRI). In 2019, the NRI was redesigned by Portulans Institute and its name updated to Network Readiness Index. The 2020 NRI, the second edition of the renewed methodological model, places the main focus on Digital...

PRIS covers two kinds of data: general and design information on power reactors, and information about operating experience with nuclear power plants. General and design information covers all reactors that are in operation, under construction, or shut-down in IAEA Member States, and in Taiwan, China. Data on operating experience cover operational reactors, and historical data cover shutdown reactors, in IAEA Member States and in Taiwan, China. In these areas PRIS is considered the most...

World university rankings are lists of higher education institutions ordered using a combination of indicators. Some rankings rely mainly on research indicators, while others place a great deal of emphasis on opinion based surveys. Up to now, there has been no ranking measuring the quality of the learning environment as well as research without relying on surveys and university data submissions. The CWUR ranking measures the quality of education and training of students as well as the prestige...

By June 2015, the U.S. is home to more than 320 million inhabitants. The US population is diverse in ethnic and national lines. By June 2015, 77% of population are White people, 13.2% are African Americans, 5.5% are Asians, 1.25% are native Americans, less than 1% are native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander population, and 2.5% are two or more races. Population pyramid for races has different forms. For White Americans, African Americans and native Americans the structure looks like a...

In 2014, the world population reached 7.21 billion people. However, some countries are facing depopulation. Besides Japan, these are mainly Central & Eastern European highly indebted states. Hard economic conditions, caused by austerity policy, lack of growth and high unemployment are forcing people to move to other countries in search for better job. Only during 2013-2014 (July to July) Spain have lost about 215 thousands of residents, Romania 73 thousands, Greece - 70 thousands, Ukraine...

Doing Business 2015: Going Beyond Efficiency, a World Bank Group flagship publication, is the 12th in a series of annual reports measuring the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it. Doing Business presents quantitative indicators on business regulations and the protection of property rights that can be compared across 189 economies—from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe—and over time. Doing Business measures regulations affecting 11 areas of the life of a business. Ten...

Technology is ever evolving and new cyber threats continue to be devised. In embracing technology progress, cybersecurity must form an integral and indivisible part of the process. Unfortunately, cybersecurity is not yet at the core of many national and industrial technology strategies. Countries need to be aware of their current capability level in cybersecurity and at the same time identify areas where cybersecurity needs to be enhanced. The Global Cybersecurity Index (GCI) is a measure of...

According to the 2015 World's Billionaires List from Forbes magazine, the total number of billionaires around the world expanded to 1,826 persons from 1645 a year ago, with an aggregate net worth now exceeding $7 trillion, up from $6.4 trillion last year. The average net worth of the gropu decreased by $60 million to $3.86 billion. The 29th edition, released in March 2015, is visualized below for Knoema users to compare and contrast across countries and between the 2014 and 2015 edition. A few...

The World Justice Project (WJP) Rule of Law Index® provides original, impartial data on how the rule of law is experienced by the general public in 102 countries around the globe. The WJP Rule of Law Index 2016® relies on over 100,000 household and 2,400 expert surveys to measure how the rule of law is experienced in practical, everyday situations by ordinary people around the world. Performance is assessed using 44 indicators across eight categories, each of which is scored and ranked...

With the international community still assessing the implications of NATO's first deployment test of the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF) in June in western Poland, the question becomes: how does NATO rank among other military alliances worldwide? For the purposes of the June exercise, 2,100 soldiers and over 300 vehicles were deployed to Poland within four days, using six trains, 16 flights, and 14 convoys, according to western press reports. In the event of a real crisis, however,...

Select the indicator and choose countries from the ranking lists to compare the countries

Global Firepower (GFP) provides a unique analytical display of data concerning today's world military powers. Over 100 world powers are considering in the ranking which allows for a broad spectrum of comparisons to be achieved concerning relative military strengths. The Global Firepower ranking is based strictly on each nations potential conventional war-making capabilities across land, sea and air. The nuclear capability is not taken into account. The final ranking also incorporates values...

Gender inequality arises from differences in social, political, and civil rights between men and women and has persisted in various forms since ancient times. The Global Gender Gap Report states that none of us will see gender equality during our lifetimes. If true, this will mean a perpetuation of stunted economic development. Without the full deployment of roughly half of the world’s total talent pool, full competitiveness and future-readiness of the world's economies and businesses are...

Over the last thirty years, the ranking of world exporters has significantly changed. Until 2000 the leading positions had been occupied by Germany and the United States. In 2010 China outpaced them, and till now China has taken the first place with a significant advantage, whereas the United States and Germany take the second and the third places accordingly. As regards the import, till 2016 the United States has taken the first position in the number of imported goods. Germany also imports a...

The Direction of Trade Statistics (DOTS) from IMF presents current figures on the value of merchandise exports and imports disaggregated according to a country's primary trading partners. Area and world aggregates are included in the display of trade flows between major areas of the world. Reported data is supplemented by estimates whenever such data is not available or current. Imports are reported on a cost insurance and freight (CIF) basis and exports are reported on a free on board (FOB)...

Since the 1950s, the BP Statistical Review of World Energy has delivered objective and globally consistent data on world energy markets. The publication has become a widely respected and authoritative publication in the field of energy economics, relied on by media outlets, academia, world governments, and energy companies alike. BP publishes a new edition each June and typically conducts a road show to launch the report in the months preceding the official release. The 2018 edition...

DHL released the third edition of its Global Connectedness Index (GCI), a detailed analysis of the state of globalization around the world. The latest report, authored by internationally acclaimed globalization expert Professor Pankaj Ghemawat together with Steven A. Altman, shows that global connectedness, measured by cross-border flows of trade, capital, information and people, has recovered most of its losses incurred during the financial crisis. Especially the depth of international...

The International Financial Statistics (IFS) has introduced changes in the presentation of the monetary statistics for the Euro Area and its member countries. The new presentation alignes the accounts of depository corporations in the Euro Area with the methodology of the IMF's Monetary and Financial Statistics Manual, 2000 and Monetary and Financial Statistics Compilation Guide.

Bloomberg ranked global cities based on the A.T. Kearney Global Cities Index score. Cities were scored on a scale of zero to 100 according to 26 metrics in five dimensions: business activity, human capital, information exchange, cultural experience and political engagement. In 2014 New York kept the first place by the overall score and in the business activity ranking. Fast-growing Asian megacities: Bejing, Shanghai, Singapore - improved their positions. Source: Global Cities Index,...

Precipitated by the steep decline in global oil prices, the non-OPEC* active rig count fell in June to a new multi-year low at roughly 1,600 rigs, a 46 percent decrease since the end of 2014. The severity of the decline in drilling activity varies among countries and producing regions. While the United States and other developed countries have decreased dramatically the number of active rigs throughout the first half of 2015, the total number of active rigs among OPEC members has remained...

LMC Automotive in partnerships with Oxford Economics and JATO Dynamics provides the highest quality global sales and production data and forecasts for light vehicles and heavy trucks. As motor vehicles are big-ticket consumer durables, monthly sales figures in particular are seen as an indicator of broader economic health of a given country. On this dashboard the latest LMC public data for Global light vehicle sales*, passenger car sales in Western Europe, and light vehicle production in North...

Balance of Payments (BOP) is a method employed by countries to monitor all international monetary transactions occured during a particular period of time. Usually, Balance of Payments is calculated quarterly and annually. All trades conducted by both the private and public sectors are accounted for in country's Balance of Payments in order to determine how much money is going in and out of the country's economy. If a country has received money, this is noted as a credit, and if a country has...

Talent, not capital, will be the key factor linking innovation, competitiveness and growth in the 21st century, and we must each understand better the global talent value chain. Better data and metrics are critical to this understanding. The Human Capital Index quantifies how countries are developing and deploying their human capital and tracks progress over time. This Report provides comprehensive information on the talent base in each country, including information on education levels of the...

Each year several influential global agencies publish their views on the economic situation in the world. We have collected end-of-year baseline forecasts of the 5 largest agencies (IMF, World Bank, OECD, UN and the European Commission) for each available country since 1998 into the one dataset. In this page, you can observe forecasts for 2014-2017, which were made by each of those agencies in previous years, and analyze the accuracy of the forecasts from the historical perspective. It is...

The Global Hunger Index (GHI) is designed to comprehensively measure and track hunger globally and by country and region. Calculated each year by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), the GHI highlights successes and failures in hunger reduction and provides insights into the drivers of hunger. The GHI ranks countries on a 100-point scale. Zero is the best score (no hunger), and 100 is the worst, although neither of these extremes is reached in practice. To reflect the...

UNAIDS was mandated by the UN General Assembly to monitor progress on global AIDS response in the 2001 General Assembly Special Session on HIV and AIDS, and reaffirmed in the 2011 High Level Meeting. The Global AIDS Response Progress Reporting data consists of 30 indicators, divided by 10 global targets, which are reported by participating countries on their national response to HIV/AIDS. Data used to be reported every second year from 2004 until 2012. However, starting 2013, the data is...

During the past three years, the World Economic Forum has been working on the New Energy Architecture initiative to better understand the changes underway in the global energy system, and how they can be managed to enable an effective transition. A core pillar of this work has been the development of the Global Energy Architecture Performance Index. The EAPI employs a set of indicators to assess and rank the energy architectures of 124 countries. The indicators highlight the performance of...

Published by Forbes magazine since 2003, the Forbes Global 2000 is an annual ranking of the world’s top 2000 public companies. Forbes ranks the companies according to four basic metrics: profit, sales, assets, and market value. The world's 2000 biggest public companies account for $201 trillion in total assets, $42 trillion in revenues, $3 trillion in profits, and $54 trillion in market value, according to the 2020 list.The world's largest company by market value in 2020 is Saudi Aramco, the...

US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama jointly held assets last year worth an estimated $1.9 million to $6.9 million, according to required federal financial disclosure reports. The range of the Obamas’ net worth is little changed from 2013, when the assets were estimated between $1.95 million and $7.15 million. According to the Center for Responsive Politics estimates, Mr. Obama ranks only 143th in the list of US politicians by average net worth. As of 2013, the richest US...

The flow of refugees in the European Union has increased about 50% in 2014. The latest figures presented by the Eurostat on Tuesday marked a rise by almost 195 thousand asylum applicants from year before, to the total of 626 thousands of refugees from the countries outside EU. Most refugees come from Syria. People escaping Eritrea and Afganistan were next on the list. Asylum applicants from Syria rose to 122 thousand in the EU-28 in 2014, which equated to 20 % of the total from all non-member...

As a result of the surprising UK parliamentary elections, the Conservative Party has got a majority of 330 seats in the new UK Parliament*. The Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats have lost much more seats than it had been expected according to the pre-election polls. For the Liberal Democrats it was the absolute defeat: they've lost 48 of 56 parliamentary seats. According to the report by The Smith Institute the average age of the Member of Parliament (MP) following the election has risen...

In 2013 the average income of the Top-1% Americans reached 1.12 million dollars (including capital gains): 35 times higher than the average income of the 90% of the population. According to the data from The World Top Incomes Database, maintained by the Paris School of Economics, top-10% most wealthy persons for now share about one half of overall personal income in the US. Such a large Top-10% income share have not be seen even in Great Depression. The overall inequality, as measured by the...

Over 800,000 people die due to suicide every year and there are many more who attempt suicide. Hence, many millions of people are affected or experience suicide bereavement every year. There is one death by suicide in the world every 40 seconds. Suicide is the 3rd leading cause of death in the world for those aged 15-44 years. Source : http://knoema.com/WLDSU2015/suicide-statistics-2013

By the end of 2013 in the US was about 256 million motor vehicles (including motorcycles, according to the data of the US Federal Highway Administration, FHWA). A growing number of automobiles and trucks was one of the main drivers of increased petroleum consumption over the years. The financial crisis of 2008 caused a sharp increase in demand for energy-efficient engines and alternative fuels. The overall demand for motor gasoline in the US has still not recovered to pre-crisis...

The fattest nations in the world are not probably the ones that first come to mind. The United States does not even make the top five. Instead, in the Pacific island states of Oceania and some Caribbean islands lead the world with at least 80 percent of the populations now overwight or obese.* In Tonga and the Federated States of Micronesia more than 90 percent of men and women ages 15 and over have body mass indices (BMI**) of more than 25 kg/m² (overweight) or more than 30 kg/m² (clinically...

According to the latest World Happiness Report, issued by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) on Apr 23 2015, the happiest countries in the world are Switzerland, Iceland, Denmark and Norway. Four top countries have average scores between 7.5 and 7.6, and the differences between them are not statistically significant. The rest of the top 10 (in order) are Canada, Finland, Netherlands, Sweden, New Zealand and Australia, all with average scores above 7.28. Comparing the country...

In 1964 United States by the Food Stamp Act of 1964 have re-established the Food Stamp Program intended to provide food-purchasing assistance for low- and no-income people living in the U.S. In 2008 the program was renamed as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). As of 2014, 46.5 million Americans or 14.6% of resident population* were receiving SNAP benefits (monthly average). The average SNAP client received a monthly benefit of $125.35. Total program cost has exceeded 74...

An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is broadly defined by experts as the result of a sudden release of energy in the Earth’s crust that creates seismic waves. At the Earth’s surface, earthquakes manifest themselves by shaking and sometimes displacement of the ground. When the epicenter of a large earthquake is located offshore, the seabed may be displaced sufficiently to cause a tsunami. Earthquakes can also trigger landslides and occasionally volcanic activity. The...

World military expenditure totalled $1.8 trillion in 2014, a fall of 0.4 per cent in real terms since 2013, according to figures released by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) in the latest update of its military expenditure database. World military spending, while falling for the third year in a row, has levelled off as reductions in the United States and Western Europe were largely matched by increases in Asia and Oceania, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Africa. US...

According to Millward Brown's latest BrandZ™ report, the combined value of the world's top-100 most valuable brands in 2014 increased by 12 percent to $2.9 trillion. The top 10 brands represented almost one third of the total for the top 100, led by the technology sector. Google Inc claimed the number one spot with a total brand value of $159 billion. Number two was Apple ($148 billion), followed by IBM ($108 billion) and Microsoft ($90 billion). Twitter and LinkedIn entered the Top 100 for...

In 2014, China kept its position as the world’s largest exporter of goods for the sixth consecutive year. China's share of world exports has exceeded 12.3% - is a new record in history. United States, being the second largest merchandise exporter in terms of gross value, is the largest importer also. Net imports of goods in the US is the largest in the world in nominal terms. In 2014 net imports of goods in US was $787 bln, $610 bln more than the second-largest world’s merchandise net importer...

According to Eurostat annual data*, European natural gas imports slightly declined since 2010. The largest natural gas importing countries are Germany (which represent about 1/4 of overall EU imports), Italy, UK, France and Spain. The security of the EU’s natural gas supplies threatened by a high proportion of imports concentrated among relatively few partners. More than three quarters of the EU-28’s imports from outside of European Union comes from Russia, Norway and Algeria. Despite the...

The latest edition of NASBO’s State Expenditure Report finds that total state spending in fiscal 2014 is estimated to have grown at its fastest pace since the recession, largely due to an increase in federal Medicaid funds as a majority of states chose to expand enrollment under the Affordable Care Act. Total state spending growth in fiscal 2013 was more modest; however, total state expenditure did return to positive growth following declines in fiscal 2012. Since its inception in 1987, the...

The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) is a forum for the travel and tourism industry - one of the world’s largest economic sectors, contributing trillions of dollars annually to the global economy, creating jobs and wealth, generating exports, boosting taxes and stimulating capital investment. WTCC is made up of members from the global business community and works with governments to raise awareness about the travel and tourism industry. It is known for being the only forum to represent...

In the April 2015 World Economic Outlook (WEO) IMF has revised down global growth forecasts compared to October 2014 estimates. According to IMF, the global growth is projected to be 3.45% in 2015, with uneven prospects across the main countries and regions. Relative to last year, the outlook for advanced economies is slightly improving, while the growth in emerging market and developing economies is projected to be lower, primarily reflecting weaker prospects for some large emerging market...

During the last 10 years, a small group of emerging economies in Asia have supported the growth in total global steel production. While India and South Korea have contributed, production from China overwhelmingly leads globally. Accounting for half of global steel production, analysts worldwide monitor China's monthly production figures closely for signs of economic strength but also to gauge forward pricing expectations based on global demand and the production response of competing mills...

National and sub-national time-series data on Ebola cases and deaths in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Senegal and Mali is the most comprehensive dataset on Ebola situation available to public. The data compiled manually by The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in West & Central Africa from a number of published reports (WHO situation reports and the data from the national Ministries of Health) and updated on daily basis. In this interactive dashboard, you can...

Next year, the US Old Age and Survivors Insurance trust fund (OASI) for the first time since early 1980s will have a deficit of 13 billion dollars. According to the projections of the US Whitehouse Office of Management and Budget, by 2020 the deficit of the largest US retirement fund will deepen to $123 bln - the level never seen in history. Despite the expected surpluses in others social and Medicare funds, the US federal social security system as a whole will become insolvent in the next 5...

Person with disability means a person suffering from not less than forty percent of any disability as certified by a medical authority (any hospital or institution, specified for the purposes of this Act by notification by the appropriate Government). As per the act "Disability" means - (i) Blindness; (ii) Low vision; (iii) Leprosy-cured; (iv) Hearing impairment; (v) Loco motor disability; (vi) Mental retardation; (vii) Mental illness. Those workers who had worked for the major part of the...

The expansion of natural gas production in the United States keeps domestic natural gas prices at very low levels. But increase of the US output has only a limited impact on prices in other world regions. In Europe natural gas three times more expensive. In Japan - the world's largest single-country gas importer - prices five times higher than in the US. Such a large price gap last seen only in late 1970s - early 1980s. Natural gas price rose sharply in Japan due to lack of supply of other...

Last week at the meeting in Lausanne (Switzerland) the United States and five other world powers reached a provisional agreement with Iran to scale back its nuclear program significantly for 10 to 15 years and accept intense international inspections. In exchange, the United States and the international community would lift most of the sanctions that have punished the Iranian economy. Since 2011, the EU and US have imposed almost total embargo on Iran’s foreign trade and financial...

Bengaluru City Traffic Branch has got 7 Sub-Divisions, 42 Traffic Police Stations. Each traffic sub-division is headed by an Assistant Commissioner of Police and Police Station by a Inspector of Police.

The latest empoyment situation report, issued by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics on Fri 3 Apr was a huge disappointment. Payrolls increased by only 126,000 workers in March, the smallest gain since December 2013 and much weaker than the economists' most pessimistic forecasts. Moreover, the payroll numbers for the two previous months were significantly revised down (-56,000 compared to initial estimate for the January and -31,000 for the February). The Labor Department data capped a week of...

Every two years, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) through its Division for Public Administration and Development Management (DPADM) publishes the United Nations E-Government Survey. The Survey provides a snapshot with relative rankings of e-government development of all Member States of the United Nations. By ranking the performance of countries on a relative scale, the Survey provides relevant information to support policy makers in shaping their...

On March 26, 2015, a Saudi-led coalition began a bombing compaign in Yemen targeting the Houthis and their allies, which include forces loyal to Yemen's former leader, Ali Abdullah Saleh. Airstrikes in Yemen will continue until Shiite rebels there "withdraw and surrender their weapons," a summit of Arab leaders decided on Sunday, March 28. The leaders also agreed in principle to form a joint military force, putting the Arab League on a path to potentially more aggresively challenge Shiite power...

OECD Key Economic Indicators (KEI) database contains monthly and quarterly statistics for the 34 member countries and for a selection of non-member countries on a wide variety of economic indicators, namely: quarterly national accounts, industrial production, composite leading indicators, business tendency and consumer opinion surveys, retail trade, consumer and producer prices, hourly earnings, employment/unemployment, interest rates, monetary aggregates, exchange rates, international trade...

A child is nothing but a growing adult, who's brain is yet to develop about thr things going on around it, understand people and environment, going towards maturity. Child abuse is something that child must've not even heard of. It is something against the child. It destroys the child physically as well as mentally. Its a total damage to the childs growth. The child not only breaks down, but even looses hope in humanity and will fear to stand up again. Such children must be handled in a way...

The US Federal Debt (also referred to as The Public Debt or The Government Debt) is the amount owed by the federal government of the United States at any time in the past and not yet repaid. America has the largest debt burden in the world, which is estimated to be $18,472 billion by the end of 2015. Generally, there are two components of gross federal debt: debt held by the public and Ddbt held by government accounts. In 2007 the share of US federal debt held by the public was 56% only,...

The International Energy Agency is a Paris-based autonomous intergovernmental organization established in 1974 in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis. The IEA was initially dedicated to responding to physical disruptions in the supply of oil, as well as serving as an information source on statistics about the international oil market and other energy sectors. IEA member countries (excluding crude oil net exporters) are required to maintain total oil stock levels equivalent to at least 90 days of...

(16 March 2020) On Sunday, in anticipation of the dire potential effects of the coronavirus on the US economy, the US Federal Reserve slashed the federal funds rates to nearly zero. In addition to a one-percentage-point rate cut decrease—the second emergency rate cut so far this month—the Federal Reserve: Cut reserve requirements for thousands of banks to zero;Announced a $700 billion quantitative easing program ($500 billion of Treasurys, $200 billion of agency-backed mortgage securities)...

According to the new BP Energy Outlook report, despite the dramatic recent weakening in global energy markets, ongoing economic expansion in Asia – particularly in China and India – will drive continued growth in the world’s demand for energy over the next 20 years. Global demand for energy is expected to rise by 32% from 2015 to 2035, or by an average of 1.2% a year. The renewables and biofuels will be the fastest growing energy sectors next 20 years in relative terms. As expected by BP, the...

The Joint Organisations Data Initiative (JODI) is one of the most comprehensive sources of oil industry statistics in the world. The database contains monthly updates for production, demand, refinery intake and output, imports, exports, closing stock levels for crude oil and various oil products for more than 90 participating countries. With Knoema's interactive flexibility you can easily explore the complex JODI dataset. Select your own indicator and unit of measure at the top-left of the map...

To improve the transparency and to strengthen the internal EU energy market, the European Commission tracks the key market indicators for main petroleum products in the member countries, gathering information about the price changes, consumption, the taxes and the duties. At the present time, share of taxes and other duties in the petroleum products' consumer prices in EU is about 60% for motor-fuels, and about 30% for a heating fuels. The net price of the Euro-super 95 automotive gasoline,...

According to the 2016 Forbes World's Billionaires List, the total number of billionaires worldwide expanded to 1,810. The aggregate net worth of the list's members exceeded $6 trillion, while the average net worth was $3.6 billion. Source: Forbes World's Billionaires

The annual A.T. Kearney Global Retail Development Index ranks the top 30 developing countries for retail expansion worldwide. The Index combines 25 macroeconomic and retail-specific indicators to help retailers devise successful global strategies and to identify developing market investment opportunities. GRDI scores are based on the following four variables: market attractiveness, market saturation, country and business risk and the time pressure, which represents near-term opportunities. Each...

The Democracy Index measures the state of democracy in 167 countries around the world. The index is based on 60 indicators grouped in five different categories: electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, functioning of government, political participation, and political culture. In addition to a numeric score and a ranking, the index categorizes countries as one of four regime types: full democracies (8-9 overall index score), flawed democracies (6-7 overall score), hybrid regimes (4-6...

Melbourne Mercer Global Pension Index has become an important reference point in the debate about the quality of retirement systems around the world. While some countries have well-established retirement systems that have stood the test of time, others are just developing, especially those within the Asian region. The main goal of the Index is to provide additional information for policy makers to struggle with the competing needs of an ageing population and achieving an appropriate fiscal...

The price of gold is determined worldwide on the basis of the London Gold fixing price. The price is set per troy ounce of pure gold in the form of standardized bullions. Then, using this price as a reference, producers, dealers and other market participants set prices for jewelry, coins and other goods made of or with gold. On this interactive dashboard you can explore more than 30 years of monthly gold price history and yearly price returns quoted in 19 various currencies of the primary...

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor is the largest ongoing study of entrepreneurial dynamics in the world. Initiated in 1999 as a partnership between London Business School and Babson College, the first study covered 10 countries; since then over 100 ‘National Teams’ from every corner of the globe have participated in the project, which continues to grow annually. GEM explores the role of entrepreneurship in national economic growth, unveiling detailed national features and characteristics...

National Accounts Statistics database, maintained by the Economic Statistics Branch of the UN Statistics Division, contains analytical indicators and ratios derived from the main national accounts aggregates related to economic structure and development. It is the product of a global cooperation effort between the international statistical agencies and the national statistical services of more than 200 countries and is in accordance with the request of the Statistical Commission that the most...

Freedom in the World - Freedom House’s flagship publication - is the standard-setting comparative assessment of global political rights and civil liberties. Published annually since 1972, the survey ratings and narrative reports on 193 countries and 15 related and disputed territories are used by policymakers, the media, international corporations, civic activists, and human rights defenders to monitor trends in democracy and track improvements and setbacks in freedom worldwide. With the...

The Social Progress Index is the result of a two-year process guided by a stellar team of experts which includes, among the others, renowned economists Hernando de Soto and Michael Porter and the president of The Rockefeller Foundation Dr. Judith Rodin. The Index synthesizes a huge body of research to identify the dimensions of performance of societies and measure the social progress comprehensively and rigorously. The Index has been structured around 12 components and 54 distinct...

Despite international ceasefire negotiations and agreements, political situation in Eastern Ukraine continues to worsen. In early February 2015, the intensity of a conflict between Ukrainian Armed Forces and pro-Putin separatists increased dramatically. According to the estimates, nearly 1 million people lost their homes and means of livelihood during the armed conflict. Overall number of people killed in Ukraine’s war since April 2014 reached 5,486 (February 6, 2015*), with about 13,000...

In general, there are improvements in Ebola case finding, burial practices and community engagement. Nevertheless, the decline in case incidence has stopped. The increase in number of cases in Guinea and widespread transmission of Ebola in Sierra Leone highlight a significant problem, which should be solved in order to lower case incidence to zero. The first week of February 2015 ended with 144 new cases. Guinea reported a sharp increase in case incidence: there were 65 new confirmed cases...

The Global Youth Wellbeing Index collects youth-related data to estimate the state of young people’s wellbeing throughout the world. The Index is designed to elevate youth needs and opportunities along with young people’s participation on national and global issues. It also provides public and private sector decision-makers with a clear vision of today’s youth needs. The Index takes into account 30 countries with both high and low income from five regions, which represent nearly 70% of the...

The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal have recently updated The Index of Economic Freedom, which shows the advancement in economic freedom, prosperity, and opportunity across 186 countries. The Index covers 10 freedoms from property rights to entrepreneurship, which represent a comprehensive analysis of countries' economic conditions in a clear and friendly format. With Knoema's flexibility you can easily observe each of these sub-indices on the radar chart by clicking the...

The collapse of oil prices in 2014 trickled through to the rotary rigs, forcing a similar downward fall in the number of active oil and gas drilling rigs worldwide as producers acclimated to a new environment in which prices were below the marginal production cost in many oil-producing countries. In several US states the quantity of oil rigs, which strongly increased during the shale boom in 2009-2014, quickly reached historically low levels. As the history shows, the decrease in rig count...

(15 April 2021) On January 1, 2014, establishments licensed by the state of Colorado began commercial sales of marijuana to the general public, which led cannabis industry stock values to skyrocket by about 200% from January to March 2014 as measured by the MJIC Marijuana Global Index. Since then, 15 more states in the US have adopted the legal use of marijuana, with the New York becoming the 16th state and the nation’s second-largest legal marijuana market in March of this year. Moreover, on...

The Economist has recently updated its famous “Big Mac Index” based on McDonald’s Big Mac prices, collected throughout the world. Now the cheapest burgers in US Dollar terms can be bought in Ukraine: for $1.2 only. The most expensive ones are being sold in Switzerland, where you should pay $7.54 for one burger. Big Mac Index shows, how much the national currency is “undervalued” or “overvalued” in relation to “fair” Big Mac price. In respond to the criticism that you would expect average...

At the peak of the US corporate earnings reporting season, Apple Inc. reported record revenue for the 4th quarter of 2014 calendar year (or the 1st quarter of 2015 fiscal year, which began in the US in October 2014). Now Apple Inc. has market capitalization of about 640 billion dollars, which is larger than GDP of such countries as Sweden, Belgium, Finland, Norway, Venezuela, Algeria and many other (they are painted in shades of red on the map). The US and China are as large as 27-28 AAPL's...

Today, Jan 28 US Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee (FOMC) will hold a regular meeting and shall formulate its vision of US monetary policy for the near future. Due to fallen commodities prices and changes in monetary policy in Europe, financial markets expect the US Fed can also change the rhetoric and move the previously expected rate hikes and policy tightening further in the future. Let's try to take a deeper look at main indicators US Fed uses for setting policy guidelines according...

In 2014, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a wide-sweeping reform and economic growth plan to address female foeticide in India under a campaign called, “Educate the Girl, Save the Girl”. Through the empowerment of women, Prime Minister Modi sought to stop female feoticide, a practice which has grown in India over the last few decades as fetus imaging technology to confirm the gender of the fetus has developed and become more broadly available. As a result, while the overall ratio...

According to the preliminary results, the left-radical party SYRIZA won the parliamentary elections in Greece. The voting results are very close to the forecast made on the basis of polls (see bar charts). SYRIZA won 10% more votes than in 2012, and will get 149 (vs 71 previously) seats in the new Parliament of Greece which does not provide it with the majority directly, but makes it easy to form the majority in the coalition. The main message of SYRIZA in the elections was a rejection...

On Sunday, January 25th, the parliamentary elections are taking place in Greece. Today the Greek political arena consists mainly of all shades of red and brown. Some recent polls show, that the left-radical party SYRIZA may get the majority (151) of seats in parliament as a result of upcoming elections. However, every poll has a margin of error, and some individual poll results can significantly differ from other observations. To make more reasonable estimates, it is better to use average data...

According to wide-spread market and analyst expectations, today the European Central Bank in order to respond to the growing deflationary trends will launch a new Large-Scale Asset Purchase program (LSAP, or, so called, "Quantitatve Easing"). However, the massive purchases of assets (usually government bonds) by central banks not only increase inflation, but also create pressure on government bond yields, which in Europe are on lowest levels for last ten years (see the graph) and in core EMU...

According to data prepared by Oxfam International for Annual Meeting in Davos, in 2014 the wealth of 80 world's richest people exceeded total wealth of more than 3 500 000 000 (three and half billion) people belonging to bottom 50% population of the world by incomes. If growing inequality trend, which got a fresh start since 2009, continues, then top 1% of world population will be wealthier than bottom 99% by the end of next year. For now, 80 richest billionaires have net worth of about 1.9...

Approximately one third of all victims - about 77,000 people - were claimed in the war in Syria alone during the period. An additional 40,000 casualties are attributable to a conflict minimally discussed by Western media - the civil war that erupted in December 2013 in South Sudan, the world's youngest country. The war in Ukraine, which began in 2014, had already taken at least 4,843 lives. Some ongoing conflicts last for decades. The combined death toll of the conflicts in the Democratic...

(9 February 2021) 2020 was the second hottest year on Earth since the 1880s, according to the 2020 Global Climate Report from The National Centers for Environmental Information. For the northern hemisphere, the 2020 land and ocean surface temperature was the highest ever recorded in the 141-year reporting history at +1.28°C (+2.30°F) above average. This was 0.06°C (0.11°F) higher than the previous record set in 2016. The southern hemisphere was hot last year as well, reporting the fifth...

On January 15 the Swiss National Bank, in order to fight the increasing deflation, lowered its target rates deeper in negative territory (-1.25% - -0.25%). However, at the same time SNB canceled the minimum limit, previously set for the national currency exchange rate, triggering the largest event in the FX market in recent years. The Swiss franc soared to an unprecedented 18% against the dollar in minutes annihilating capitals of those who bet on further depreciation. Currency has not seen...

World Bank in its recent "Global Economy Prospects" report cut global economy outlook for 2015-2017. But forecast for US economy was raised: from 3.0% (Jun-14 forecast) to 3.2% growth in 2015 and 2.88% annual average growth rate in next 3 years (which corresponds to 8.9% overall growth from now to end of 2017). Also, outlook for India, Pakistan and Egypt was improved. The main decrease occurred in the outlook for the developing non-OECD economies and Euro area. Highest cuts were made for...

For the first two quartals of 2015 Latvia wil be the Presidency of the Council of the European Union. It's the second case when former Soviet Union republic takes this role. The presidency's function is to chair meetings of the Council, determine its agendas, set a work programme and facilitate dialogue both at Council meetings and with other EU institutions. Country announced 3 prioritets: Competative Europe, Digital Europe, Engaged Europe. Both main goals and tasks are defined for those...

Disinflationary trend in developed economies, started about 2011, continues. As latest World Bank's Data shows, inflation in developed world in December was at lowest levels since 2008-2009 financial crisis and its clearly going to enter the deflation zone soon. But industrial production, in general, keeps growing, though at a slower pace. In some countries the picture is quite different. E. g., stagflation environment (industrial production contraction accompanied by high inflation rate) can...

World oil prices continue to fall, and the price of gasoline too, but gasoline prices are differs across countries by a huge amounts. Some countries subsidize gasoline, others, on opposite, have significant tax burden. Most expensive gasoline (in nominal USD terms) is in the Italy, Netherlands, Norway and Hong Kong - about 1.86 USD per liter as of 12 Jan 2015. And the cheapest one is in the Venezuela, whose citizens drive their cars almost for free (only 2 cents per liter). But what is...

Do you know which countries are homes to most people of the Muslim population of the world? If you think that this is the Middle East - you are not right. Actually, largest Muslim country is Indonesia - about 205 millions of people who affiliated with Islam lives there. The next are Pakistan and India and on 4th place is Bangladesh. The overall Muslim population of the world increased from 1990 to 2010 by more than 600 million. And by 2030, according to the estimates of Pew Research Center,...

With an unemployment rate of 5,6%, according to BLS estimates from the latest payroll report, the economic situation in the US perfectly match the targets of the US Federal Reserve System on unemployment (near 6%) and an inflation rate (about 2%). It is interesting that some other countries (China, for example), fits into that criteria well enough too (look at the first bubble chart). It has to be said that unemployment rate of 6% does not mean that only 6% of the adult population do not...

Among commodities a set of common macroeconomic forces influence and shape global price trends, including the strength of major international currencies and economic growth trends both globally and for specific major economies. Disparity among pricing trends for specific commodities, however, is normal and demonstrates how strongly influenced prices often are by commodity-specific factors, such as harvest yields, shipping and warehousing conditions, local export bans, and changes in taxation...

From 1970 through 2014, terrorists killed more than 310,000 people worldwide and injured another 355,000, according to data from the University of Maryland's Global Terrorism Database. More than half of those fatalities - approximately 170,000 or 55 percent - have occurred since 2000; about 30 percent have occurred since 2010. Every year since and including 2012 has set a new record in total global terrorist attacks (see chart at the bottom of the page) and with these new attacks, we may be...

The insurance industry is a major component of the economy by virtue of the amount of premiums it collects, the scale of its investment and, more fundamentally, the essential social and economic role it plays by covering personal and business risks. Since the early 1980s, the OECD has collected and analysed data on insurance in OECD countries such as the number of insurance companies and employees, insurance premiums and investments by insurance companies. The launch of the Global Insurance...

Within the field of meteoritics, the study of meteorites, a critical distinction is drawn between meteorites observed to have fallen and those that have been found, with the latter far exceeding the former. According to the Meteoritical Bulletin Database published by the Meteoritical Society, 60,000 meteorites have been found on Earth but their falls were not observed by people or automated devices. Another 1,152 meteorite falls have been observed and recorded throughout human history. The...

World crude oil price continue its free fall, while the US crude oil stock levels are at historical maximum and petroleum products stocks on multi-year highs. Explore historical stock levels of oil and various products on the graph choosing indicator from the list above (zoom by selecting desired period in the graph by the mouse)

US imposed new sanctions on North Korea - the most sanctioned country on the planet (see the huge list of sanctions in place from the SanctionsWiki below the page). Being also one of the poorest countries in the world (GDP per capita in North Korea more than 250 times less than in the richest nations, >85 times less the USA, >25 times less than South Korean one, even about 1.5 times less the Zimbabwe) North Korea has significant military power (look at the ranking on the left). The...

Since the new year Lithuania adopted Euro currency and became a full member of the European Monetary Union. And one of the few EMU countries that fully meet the Maastricht criteria in terms of debt level and budget deficit (national public debt not exceeding 60% of GDP and national budget deficit at or below 3% of GDP. See the history of these indicators among EMU countries on the animated bubble chart). Paradoxically, since the beginning of European debt crisis, indebtness of most...

On Sunday, 28 December 2014, an AirAsia flight QZ8501 on an Airbus 320 with 162 people on board lost contact with ground control and crashed in the Java Sea. It was the third largest aircraft catastrophe by number of casualties in 2014. Overall death count in 2014 reached 1,329 people, but it was not a "record" year. In fact, 2014 year was 59th by rank of fatalities in plane crash accidents in history. See the list of all 2014 plane crashes in the table or analyst the nearly 100-year history...

United States, despite the cuts in military spending during Barack Obama presidency, remains the military leader of enourmous size, though US military expenditures share in GDP relatively low, compared to some countries (Middle East in particular, as shown on ranking gadget). Explore the country and regional trends on historical line chart by selecting the country in the ranking list or easily identify countries, which increase the military expenditures share in GDP, on the world map and...

2014 was a challenging year for world markets and for world currencies too. Almost every currency in the world was devalued (more or less) compared to US dollar. Russian ruble (-42%) and Ukraine hryvnia (-47.5%) became "champions" (due to political conflict between those states). UK Pound Sterling and Pakistani Rupee were the strongest. Among the developed markets US was the best (+12.8% price return year-to-date). European markets were, mainly, disappointing (in USD terms, at least). In...

(Oct 2018) Global oil prices have fallen by more than 30 percent since the summer of 2014, affecting oil producers and consumers alike. This dashboard presents oil price dynamics and the breakeven oil prices—minimum oil price to cover general government expenditures—over the past decade as well as a snapshot of the marginal cost of oil production by country in 2014. A world oil price in the range of $55 to $60 per barrel is less than the cost of Russian Arctic oil production, European and...

The Global Opportunity Index answers a pressing need for information that's vital to a thriving global economy. What policies can governments pursue to attract foreign direct investment (FDI), expand their economies, and accelerate job creation. What do multinational companies, other investors, and development agencies need to know before making large-scale, long-term capital commitments. The costs and conditions of doing business are central to the FDI equation. Natural resources and...

On Tuesday, 16 of Dec. 2014, Russian ruble depreciated to the level of 77 rubles per US dollar. Russian economy will end 2014 below $2 trillion. If ruble/dollar exchange rate is not changed in 2015, Russian economy will fall below 1 trillion US$.

The Access to Nutrition Index (ATNI) is founded on the premise that Food & Beverage manufacturers can make a strong contribution to addressing poor nutrition and related diseases. By assessing and ranking the world’s largest manufacturers on their nutrition-related commitments, practices and performance globally. The Overall Ranking of companies and their performances are displayed below. Select the indicator to view the companies participation in all types of Nutritional activities.

WhatsApp is a cross-platform instant messaging service for smartphones that relies on the internet for the transmission of messages. As of April 2014, the mobile messenger has more than 500 million monthly active users worldwide and ranks as one of the most popular mobile social apps globally. Based on a low-cost subscription model, WhatsApp is a cheap alternative to carrier-billed text messaging via SMS, especially for international or group messaging. The mobile...

The Grant Thornton Global Dynamism Index (GDI) ranks 60 leading economies on their dynamism in five key areas – business operating environment, economics & growth, science & technology, labour & human capital and financing environment. The GDI analyses 22 indicators across these five categories to assess the dynamism of business growth environments around the world, where dynamism refers to the changes in an economy over the past 12 months which are likely to lead to a...

The 2013 report includes a state-by-state breakdown of types and calibers of firearms recovered and traced, source states, criminal offenses associated with the crime guns, time-to-crime, and age ranges of crime gun possessors at the time of recovery. Key findings of this year’s report include pistols as the most common firearm type recovered and traced, 9 mm as the top caliber recovered and traced, and 11.08 years as the average time-to-crime for crime guns recovered and traced in...

The calculation of the Ocean Health Index for 2014 represents the first year that the Ocean Health Index has calculated a score for the entire global ocean. This year, Antarctica and the Southern Ocean along with the High Seas or Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (ABNJ) (15 regions as defined by the Food and Agriculture Organization) were also assessed. 1) The highest scoring goals and subgoals were Habitats (91), Biodiversity 83 and Economies & Livelihoods (82). 2) The lowest...

The Fragile States Index is an annual ranking of 178 nations based on their levels of stability and the pressures they face. The Index is based on The Fund for Peace’s proprietary Conflict Assessment System Tool (CAST) analytical platform. Based on comprehensive social science methodology, data from three primary sources is triangulated and subjected to critical review to obtain final scores for the Fragile States Index.

The resumed forty-eighth sessions of the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice(SBSTA 48-2) and Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI 48-2) as well as the sixth part of the first session of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Paris Agreement (APA 1-6) will take place from4 to 9 September 2018, at the United Nations Conference Centre (UNCC), Bangkok, Thailand Event holder: OECD

Oil & Gas Turkmenistan will bring together senior government ministers, top-level executives from Turkmenistan's national companies and international business representatives. Advancement of the oil and gas industry is one of the main policy priorities for the country. Sustainable development of Turkmenistan's natural resources, investment in infrastructure and the petrochemical industry are vital to the continued growth of economy. Effective implementation of this policy is closely...

In the last five years immense progress has been made all around the world in the field of enhancing tax transparency. Today it can be said that era of bank secrecy for tax purposes is over due to implementation of international standards of tax transparency and exchange of information on request (EIOR) by many countries that helps successful tackling of international tax evasion. Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes is leading the way in this process by...

This conference will bring together ministers, senior officials from UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) member states and civil society representatives to review progress and remaining challenges in the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action. Participants will also discuss the Asia-Pacific regional report on progress in implementing the Platform, including achievements, challenges and priorities for gender equality. The conference is expected to result...

Allied Academic Publication is a union of several esteemed academic and scientific associations known for promoting scientific journals. Established in the year 1997, Andrew John Publishing Group is a specialized Medical publisher that operates in alliance with the association and societies. This publishing house has been built on the base of esteemed academic and research institutions including The Canadian Vascular Access Association (CVAA), The College of Audiologists & Speech Language...

N&G 2018 will provide a unique platform for discussing the interplay between nutrition and growth in children, from disease factors through to treatment. N&G is ideal for pediatricians, gastroenterologists, endocrinologists, neonatologists, dieticians, nutritionists, nurses and all those involved in child development who share a passion for exchanging ideas and analysis of pediatric nutrition.

Across the middle-income countries of the developing world, policy makers are keenly aware that increased longevity and aging populations will place significant and growing burdens on working age adults in the near future. Event holder: The World Bank

Development of travel industry leads to benefites in different sectors. For exapmle, huge number of travalers usually increase in demand of souvenirs . It also can be rise in sales in real estates. It dependes positively on economy. On the other hand, if residents of some country spend a lot for tourism it denotes contry's wealth.

According to the history countries that had a lof of natural resources were more developed than others. However, with evolution of the science not only new opportunities to earn money were found but also created new ways of extraction and usage of natural resources. Therefore, the impcat of natural resources on economy was not reduce. The differences in geographical location is one of the most important reason of economic variety among the world. For instanse, shares of natural resources in...

Rising income inequality in the United States over the past quarter century is well documented. For the vast majority of states, the share of income held by the top decile experienced a prolonged period of stability after World War II, followed by a substantial increase in inequality during the 1980s and 1990s. And the most interesting fact that the rising income inequality has positive correlation with the growth of real personal per capita income.Frank, Mark. W. 2009 "Inequality and Growth...

On Monday October 13, 2014, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2014 has been awarded to 62-years old French professor Jean Tirole "for his analysis of market power and regulation". Tirole’s contributed to many fields of theoretical microeconomic analysis including industrial organization, regulation, game theory. On the contrary, last year’s Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded for achievements in empirical economic analysis to Eugene F. Fama, Lars...

Polish capital Warsaw is the most affordable city among 40 countries worldwide to drink a bottle of beer according to the study conducted by popular tourist portal GoEuro. 33cl bottle of beer in this city costs in average 0.79 euros. Next 4 the cheapest countries are Germany, Czech Republic, Portugal and Ireland. In bulk, European countries are favorable to have a quick one with the exception of Sweden, United Kingdom, Switzerland and Norway. The latter, in fact, is the most expensive country...

India is considered to be the country with the lowest cost of travelling by air. Average price to travel 100 km by plane in this country is $10.4. Noteworthy that India is one of two countries - the second is United States - where travelling by air is cheaper than travelling by train: in both countries the difference is about 5 dollars. On the opposite side of the ranking traditionally expensive European countries are located with Finland at the top: one hundred kilometers flight in this...

In the year 2100, June temperatures in Las Vegas, Nevada, will be as hot as June temperatures were in Miami in 1950 if current greenhouse gas emission trends continue. This corresponds to an increase in average summer temperatures by 2 degrees celsius - a pattern that could prevail across the continental United States during the rest of the century, according to projections from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. In the framework of the World Climate Research Program’s Coupled Model...

Today energy deeply entered all spheres of human lives so that further economic and social development requires strong and reliable energy supply. ExxonMobil's Outlook for Energy report shed some light on the future advancement of global energy framework by estimating energy supply and demand indicators up to the year 2040. Below you can find interactive infographics presenting key findings of this report.

Due to ban on food imports, imposed by Russian government on 7 of August, Russian imports of food from EU will decline by $6 billion, from Norway by $1,1 billion, from United Stetes, Canada and Australia by $0,8, $0,4 and $0,2 billion, correspondingly Imports of meat (cattle, poultry, swine) will decrease by 867 thous. t (7,8% of domestic consumption), imports of fish and seafood by 457 thous. t (13,7% of domestic consumption), imports of milk and milk products by 529 thous. t (1,4% of...

New York with more then 8 million people (according to 2010 Census) is the largest city in the United States. Besides New York there are 8 US cities which population exceed 1 million persons: Los Angeles (CA), Chicago (IL), Houston (TX), Philadelphia (PA), Phoenix (AZ), San Antonio (TX), San Diego (CA) and Dallas (TX). Over 160 milion people live in 5000 largest cities of the US.

Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) complements standard income poverty indicators (which define poverty as percent of population living at 1.25, 2, 2.5 etc. dollars a day) by taking into account deprivation aspect of poverty. Thus, for many people being poor means not only lack of money but also limited access to education, nutrition, sanitation, water and so on. MPI concept embraces this idea by defining the poor as those who are simultaneously deprived in several of these things. More...

Single males without children are more likely than any other population group in Europe to be unable to afford basic durable goods, according to Eurostat (2014). These goods include, for example, personal cars and telephones. Computers and affordablity of meat-based meals are notable exception, with European men scoring better than their female counterparts. And, while single adults generally tend to be more likely to lack durables than are couples, households with children, by contrast, are at...

India is a country with the biggest amount of snakebite envenoming cases occurring each year: on average, 120 thousand cases take place every year in this country. However, India is the second biggest country in the world and that is why mentioned above number looks much less ghastly in terms of per 1000 population, namely, 0.1 cases. Bhutan, conversely, is less favorable country in this regard with as much as 4 people out of 1000 suffer from snakebite envenoming each year. Bhutan and India are...

Education is the main reason for part-time employment among the youth in Europe with 41.4% of people aged 15-29 years working part time due to this reason. Denmark is the leader in this regard as 78.4% of its young population is employed part time because of education and it keeps its leading position through the years. Moreover, this share increases to 84.1% when regarding younger part of the cohort under consideration, namely, people aged 15-24. The second most important reason for the...

While unemployment rate as well as other standard indicators of economic activity focus on specific stages of person's life cycle, duration of working life indicator (DWL) or, in other words, working life expectancy, captures the entire life cycle of active and employed population. Created with the purpose of monitoring progress made under the Europe 2020 employment strategy, this indicator shows the number of years a person aged 15 years is expected to be economically active in the labor...

Global food system is far from perfect: even though there is enough food for everyone on Earth ones go to bed hungry every night while others suffer from obesity and overweight. What is wrong with our food system which cannot provide people with enough of the right food and what could be done to treat these failings? "The Good Enough to Eat Index" is the effort of OXFAM - international organization tackling poverty across the world – aimed exactly at addressing these issues. Capturing data from...

The question of ancient and pre-modern economic growth is of high interest among many researchers. Angus Maddison, emeritus professor at the University of Groningen, made important contribution to this research field by providing the most comprehensive and distant (back to 1 AD) estimates of economic and population growth. Maddison spent fifty years to complete these estimates, and, as a result, it was created unique database containing time series for GDP, GDP per capita and population for the...

The Networked Readiness Index (NRI), developed by the World Economic Forum in the frame of Global Information Technology Report, which is considered as the most comprehensive and authoritative international assessment of its kind, depicts the current stage of progress made in the world towards leveraging ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) to boost productivity, economic growth, employment creation and, as a result, increasing the returns. The key to such leveraging is focusing on...

According to the evidence provided by recent empirical studies, unemployed people are, in general, unhappier than employed ones. This evidence, however, concerns only the concept of overall life satisfaction but does not take into account experienced happiness (or experienced utility), which usually implies happiness the day before the survey and consists of satisfaction from different activities (e.g. hobbies, eating, shopping, working etc.). Experienced happiness, though, is more suitable...

Dashboard presents detailed data on air transport by reporting country (namely, Germany) and routes which includes: passengers on board (arrivals, departures and total), passengers carried (arrivals, departures and total), passenger commercial air flights (arrival, departures and total) and seats available (arrival, departures and total). The data is presented at monthly, quarterly and annual level. Passengers on board are all passengers on board of the aircraft upon landing at the reporting...

In the European Union, 474 kilograms of municipal waste was generated per person in 2014 as Eurostat data shows. Municipal waste consists of waste collected by or on behalf of municipal authorities and disposed of through the waste management system. Though it originates from different sources such as commerce, offices, selected municipal services and public institutions (schools, hospitals, government buildings), the bulk of the waste stream is produced by households. The part of non-household...

Nestlé SA - Switzerland based company - is the company with the highest level of transnationality in the world as of 2012 with in average 97% of its assets, sales and employment being foreign. At the same time, American energy giant General Electric Co has the biggest amount of foreign assets in absolute terms. This statistics is provided by UNCTAD (United Nation Conference on Trade and Development) who ranks the largest non-financial TNCs by their foreign assets and presents data on assets,...

Explore global, regional and country-level monthly data on international trade and industrial production through the CPB World Trade Monitor (WTM) database visualized below. Provided by CPB (Central Planning Bureau) Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis, WTM brings together, aggregates and summarizes monthly developments in trade and production at the earliest possible date. Note: "3M MA" refers to three months moving average, "Momentum" is the percent change of last 3 months average...

Today in the world there is a strong need for the policies that take into account the things that really matter for people, not just GDP per capita, which as a whole could be named happiness or life satisfaction. There exists rich evidence that these subjective evaluations of life have a significant impact on broad range of life outcomes, including material wealth, and for that reason they should be considered in determining strategic goals and policies. In order to facilitate this process,...

According to the long term projections of global energy markets elaborated by BP - one of the world's leading international oil and gas companies - global energy demand will rise by 41% between 2011 and 2035 but with gradually moderating pace. Moreover, major share (95%) of this growth will be ensured by the developing countries. Among all fuels, natural gas will contribute the most to the global energy demand growth, while demand for oil will continue to dominate in absolute terms. Concerning...

If you are asked a question: "Are you satisfied with your life?", what would you think about first of all? Would it be your health, relations with family and friends, income, future prospects, education level or job? Or maybe none of these things matter for your life satisfaction and you are just "singing in the rain, dancing in the rain"? Actually, all of the mentioned things as well as many other, including overall experience of life, influence people's life satisfaction, which have got close...

According to the 2019 Forbes Billionaires List, the aggregate wealth of the world's 1,810 billionaires is approximately $8.9 trillion, exceeding the GDP of Japan, the world's third-largest economy with a GDP of $4.4 trillion. In other words, the wealth of 0.00002% of the world's population accounts for 9 percent of the world's GDP of about $74 trillion. How do we measure the net worth of a billionaire? The estimate is based on total asset value, including stakes in public and private...

In order for the countries to perform sustainable development over times in all spheres of people's lives without imbalances adequate long-term strategic plans for the future are necessary to be elaborated. Development strategies will be of true benefit only in case if they are based on robust and reliable statistical tools, allowing to conduct comparative analysis of country's performance in all key fields of human being and over time. As of today, it is known lots of such tools most of which...

Facebook announced on 19th Feb 2014 the purchase of Whatsapp in a $19 Billion Deal. It means $42 per WhatsApp user. WhatsApp was founded by two guys Brain Acton and Jam Koum in 2008, who spent combined 20 years doing geeky stuff at Yahoo! Inc. before starting WhatsApp. Founded in the heart of Silicon Valley, WhatsApp reportedly earned total revenues of about 20 million last year. With only 55 employees, WhatsApp’s $19-billion valuation could, in an alternate universe where each employee was...

Being first produced in 200 BC and first put on mass production in 1850s steel nowadays is arguably the most important material used in engineering and construction throughout the world. Being an alloy of iron and carbon, steel accounts for over 3500 various grades with different chemical, environmental and physical properties, 75% of which have been created in the past 2 decades. As of 2012, it was produced 1,560 million tons of crude steel in the World with China being an absolute leader...

Present dashboard is aimed at providing comprehensive visual analysis of the dataset developed on the basis of the research "Projection of populations by level of educational attainment, age, and sex for 120 countries for 2005-2050" (Samir KC et al., 2010) (http://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol22/15/22-15.pdf). The full dataset is available through the link below.The four categories of educational attainment are based on International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED 1997)....

If you want to find your soul mate try to get a job, if you are too young to work, so attend school studiously, but if you have education degree and already have a job, that's good, go to a night club or a bar. These are not groundless words, these are firm statistical facts. So, according to a survey of 4002 American adults conducted by researchers from Stanford University, 3 above mentioned places are the most popular ones to meet a partner. On the basis of this survey it can also be derived...

Along with its cultural, leisure and recreational functions tourism contributes significantly (both directly and indirectly) to the world's economy and employment. It contributes to GDP even more than the automotive industry in all the regions throughout the globe: three times as much in Americas and two times as much in Europe, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council's 2017 research. In many countries tourism is the key source of jobs for their population. Thus, in Macau, one of...

The Policy Potential Index (PPI) is a composite index, measuring the overall policy attractiveness of the 96 jurisdictions in the survey. The index is composed of survey responses to 15 policy factors that affect investment decisions. The PPI is normalized to a maximum score of 100. Finland had the highest PPI score of 95.5. Along with Finland, the top 10 ranked jurisdictions are Sweden, Alberta, New Brunswick, Wyoming, Ireland, Nevada, Yukon, Utah, and Norway. All were in the top 10...

Along with the impressive figures of world's recent telecommunication technology development such as doubling of the households with internet access through the last decade or nearing to a reading of one mobile cellular phone per person, there are still a lot of countries where Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) uptake is still very low. Thus, in Africa, as for 2012, only 8% of households possess a computer and only 6% have access in the Internet. For comparison, in Europe the...

The World Giving Index score is based on an average of three measures of giving behaviour - the percentage of people who, in a typical month, donate money to charity, volunteer their time, and help a stranger. The three behaviours are also looked at on an individual basis within the report. This year’s report shows that, though the pace of economic expansion has slowed, the levels of involvement in giving – for all three measures – has increased on last year's results. However, looking at the...

Research and Development (R&D) is the field of statistics comprising data on science, technology and innovation. This data is of great significance in the modern economy as it helps to build broad and comprehensive vision of innovation activity that is acknowledged by the most of developed and developing countries as the key driver behind the economic growth and competitiveness. That is why, policymakers try to induce innovation activity by focusing on the role of technology, information...

According to World Bank Group, more than one fifth of the population of the developing world lives in extreme poverty, that is, lives with incomes below the threshold of $1.9 a day, constituting about 1.2 billion people. Although these disturbing figures, world has achieved impressive results in poverty reduction during the last 3 decades, even surpassing the expectations of the first Millennium Development Goal of reducing extreme poverty twofold: since 1981 the number of extremely poor people...

The world's 149 million total square kilometers of land is almost equally distributed among agricultural, forest, and other lands. Agricultural land consumes a slightly disproportionate share at 38 percent of the world's land area. About one third of the agricultural land is used as arable land, two-thirds by permanent meadows and pastures, and the remaining 3 percent as "permanent crops." An examination of the cross-country distribution of agricultural land reveals that China is the world's...

Innovation Union Scoreboard (IUS) Index assesses 27 European countries on how do they perform in innovation sphere and its subdivisions. By monitoring innovation progress across the EU27 member countries, as well as Iceland, Croatia, Norway, Serbia, Switzerland, Turkey and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia IUS attempts to build strong base to policy discussions and decisions at EU and national level. Measurement framework of IUS embraces in total 25 indicators serving as proxies for 8...

Environment domain of statistics covers such essential topics as air and water pollution, emissions of greenhouse gases and climate change, biodiversity and protected areas, forestry and agricultural environmental performance, use of fertilizers, environmental protection expenditure, waste management and others. On this page you can find relevant data on all the topics mentioned above which is provided by reliable sources including UN, OECD, Eurostat, Earth Policy Institute, PBL, EDGAR etc. By...

As of 2009, in the most European countries mining firms tend to spend little share of their investments on environmental protection, however, not without exceptions. Thus, Italian mining companies are burdened with Environmental Protection Expenditure (EPE) to the greatest extent among relative firms from the other European countries spending one third of all their investments on environmental protection, and 4% of output on current EPE. Yet, only 0.4% of total Environmental Protection...

Food security is a situation in which all people of a country at any moment of time have physical and economic access to the amount of health and nutritious food enough to keep a healthy and active lifestyle. So, it is an ideal condition to which every country should continuously tend and this tendency should be the chief aim of national agricultural and economic policy. Since the policy should be based on something, measuring and collecting data on food security is the first step towards...

Constantly increasing globalization and integration of the world, often emphasized in the modern times, is carried out mostly through merchandise trade. Nowadays, wide variety of goods are involved in merchandise trade, but traditional ones, such as fuels, mining products, machinery and transport still remain most tradable. International trade of services, including transport, tourism and financial services, is also gaining momentum headed by the US as the world leader in exports and imports of...

OECD in its Economic Outlook No 94 has revised short-term GDP growth forecast on 2014. As a result, GDP growth forecast of 54% of countries under review (23 of 42) has been decreased as well as the world average forecast which reduced by 0.4% from 4.02% to 3.62%. The most dramatic decrease in forecasted value of GDP growth has been made over India: forecast has been slumped by 1.66% from its last forecast of 6.39%. So, now India is expected to grow by 4.73% in 2014. Among other leaders of...

On this page it is gathered most relevant data and information concerning education which cover essential topics and indicators of education systems of different countries throughout the world in order to enable comprehensive analysis. It is important to understand global education tendencies in order to support sustainable development. So, literacy still remains important problem since more than 40 percent of population of Sub-Saharan Africa remains illiterate accounting for almost half of the...

The Cisco Global Cloud Index is an ongoing effort to forecast the growth of global data center and cloud-based IP traffic. The forecast includes trends associated with data center virtualization and cloud computing.Forecast OverviewGlobal data center traffic: ● Annual global data center IP traffic will reach 7.7 zettabytes by the end of 2017. By 2017, global data center IP traffic will reach 644 exabytes per month (up from 214 exabytes per month in 2012). ● Global data center IP...

In Europe, people with higher level of education and bigger income on average tend to be healthier than those with lower education and/or income level. Thus, only 55% of people with low education level (ISCED 0-2) perceive their health status as “good” and “very good”. At the same time, 81% of the population with high education level (ISCED 5-6) has good and very good health. The same picture is for income: the share of healthy people grows by almost 20% with the increase of income level from...

Nearly 14 million (estimate) people in US are Physically Challenged. California, Texas, Florida & New York states are having more physically challenged people whereas Wyoming has the least (61K). Here is the report on various disbaility indicators and how they spread across United States. Source: Disability Statistics from Cornell University

Booz & Company created the Third Billion Index, a ranking of 128 countries worldwide that is based on how effectively leaders are empowering women as economic agents in the marketplace. The index is a composite of established data on women’s economic and social status. The Third Billion Index is unique in that it focuses specifically on women in the world of work. As growing numbers of women enter the economic mainstream, they will have a profound effect on global business. A huge and...

The Americas, Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Asia-Pacific region all had increases in overall restrictions on religion in 2011. Government restrictions declined slightly in Europe, but social hostilities increased. Asia and the Pacific had the sharpest increase in government restrictions, though the level of social hostilities remained roughly the same. By contrast, social hostilities edged up in sub-Saharan Africa, but government restrictions stayed about the same. Both government...

After two consecutive years of 9%+ growth, global R&D spending returned to the long-term growth trend and grew at 5.8% in 2013 to the highest total ever, $638 billion The top three industries by R&D spending continue to be Computing & Electronics, Health, and Auto The Software & Internet, Health, and Auto sectors accounted for 74% of the overall growth in spending; Chemicals & Energy decreased its R&D expenditures Spending in North America grew at an above average rate...

In this visualization it is presented demographic projections for European countries from two sources: Eurostat and United Nations. Charts and data below are focused on the zero-migration variant of forecast, i.e. estimates of natural population change only due to births and deaths. That is why predictions are based on the assumptions of levels of fertility rate and life expectancy at birth which will prevail across the forecast period in the given country. Since each provider of forecasts...

The Global Innovation Index (GII) recognizes the key role of innovation as a driver of economic growth and prosperity and acknowledges the need for a broad horizontal vision of innovation that is applicable to both developed and emerging economies, with the inclusion of indicators that go beyond the traditional measures of innovation (such as the level of research and development in a given country). The GII has evolved into a valuable benchmarking tool to facilitate public-private dialogue,...

The Big Mac Index invented by The Economist is an informal way of measuring the purchasing power parity (PPP) between two currencies. The calculation of PPPs is based on the assumption that the dollar cost for a Big Mac in a particular country would be the same as in the United States. The indicator is chosen by The Economist magazine, as a measure of PPP, is based on the fact that the ingredients used in the preparation of Big Mac are the same over the globe, and hence the variation in dollar...

(14 June 2021) In 2020, the US unemployment rate averaged 8.1%, the highest annual rate since 2012. In January and February of last year, the unemployment rate in the United States stood at a 50-year low of 3.5%, but unemployment soared to 14.7% in April 2020 due to mass layoffs resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. US unemployment declined steadily in the second half of last year and has continued a gradual downward trend this spring. In May 2021 it reached 5.8%, which is 56% lower than the...

In this dashboard, we have integrated the most recent medium and long-term forecasts of key economic indicators for G20 countries from major international organizations, namely, the World Bank, IMF, United Nations, OECD, European Commission and the Economist Intelligence Unit. The data presented covers projections of real GDP growth, characterizing each country's output of final goods and services; consumer price inflation, as a measure of price level movements; unemployment rate, or percent of...

According to Walk Free Foundation, there are an estimated 45.8 million people enslaved around the world. The countries with the highest numbers of enslaved people are India, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Uzbekistan. Taken together, these countries account for 58% of enslaved people around the world. Modern slavery takes many forms and is known by many names: slavery, forced labor or human trafficking. Whatever term is used, the significant characteristic of all forms of modern slavery is...

Charts below illustrate current insight of the future economic development of the major countries across main economic and financial indicators by the proven international agencies. Concerning United States, its real GDP growth is expected to recover in 2014 after a slowdown in 2013, levelling off on 2.6-2.4% up to 2018 according to Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). IMF, meanwhile, is inclined to more positive forecast of 3.07% in 2018. Canada is expected to follow resembling tendency with its...

On an average Airbus continues to dominate the commercial air carrier segment of Europe, as per the 2012 statistics. In the passenger space, Airbus tops the list followed by Boeing and Embraer. However, Boeing maintains a clear lead in the cargo space, over other aircraft manufactures. Fresh purchase of A380 model of Airbus and 787 Dreamliner of Boeing by Emirates and Ethiad Airways is expected to boost the order books of both these manufactures. Boeing led the order book race in the current...

The World Justice Project report indicates that the United States is far behind other modern nations like Sweden and the Netherlands in maintaining a relevant and applicable rule of law among its government, the public, and other nongovernmental influences.

Doing Business assesses country regulations applied to small- and medium-size enterprises across 10 major areas of doing business from the registration of new entity to the resolving insolvency. Thriving small- and medium-size enterprises are one of the major drivers behind the creation of new jobs and growth of national wealth. That is why governments should provide such enterprises with prosperous environment, i.e. the rules that guarantee low transactional costs of time and money as well as...

On the whole, the European aircraft fleet can be positively characterized as constantly upgrading. Aircraft aged less than five years constitute the largest share of the total aircraft fleet. Sharp differences exist, however, among European countries. As of 2011, Germany had the second largest aircraft fleet in Europe and, at the same time, the oldest fleet. Twenty percent of the country's aircrafts were more than 20 years old, an increase from 17 percent of the fleet in 2010. The number of...

The United States ranks last among countries compared in vacation days per year and are 2nd in hours worked per year, while the French are clearly the best rested.

It is generally accepted that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the atmosphere venting from anthropogenic sources are in part responsible for global warming, one driver of global climate change. While the reality of global warming itself is still under political and scientific debate, measurements indicate that the average temperature on Earth has increased by 0.7 degrees Celsius since the start of the Industrial Revolution. To estimate the influence of and prevent dangerous interference from...

Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG) - is comprehensive statistical tool assessing African countries' performance in provision of public goods and services. Consisting of 133 variables derived from 32 independent sources IIAG measures governance performance across 4 pillars: Safety and Rule of Law, Participation and Human Rights, Sustainable Economic Opportunity and Human Development. All-embracing nature of the index makes it fairly the best instrument for setting long-term political,...

The United States rank last in child income poverty, has the largest difference in P90/P10, and has the highest percentage of people living below 50% median income.

The most notable statistic from Housing are the numbers from Canada and the United States' houses with 6 or more rooms, doubling most other modern countries mentioned here.

According to endogenous growth theories, innovations is one of the key drivers of economic growth. To boost innovations and technical progress, countries spend a lot of money on Research and Development. In most developed countries expenditures on research and development exceed 2% of GDP. And about 70-75% of R&D expenditures are covered by private business corporations.

Every additional 10 million dollars (PPP) spent on research and development result in 2 patent applications per annum in average. The implication is based on the statistics on gross domestic R&D expenditures and number of patent applications to the EPO (European Patent Office) among European countries. Strong positive correlation between these two indicators shows that the more you spend on research and development the more considerable result you get. Thus, Germany, France, UK and Italy...

After the US Government went into a shutdown on 1st october 2013, and only essential services functioned for 2 weeks, the US Congress voted on the night of 16th October 2013, to avert a debt defalut and allow the government to work again. The US financial year ends at midnight on September 30. Under US law, a new bill to approve funding for the next financial year must be approved by the House of Representatives, the Senate and the president before the financial year ends. This has not...

The Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) is a global study on the basis of which ranking of countries in terms of economic competitiveness in the world is formed. The World Economic Forum defines competitiveness as the ability of the country and its institutions to ensure stable economic growth, which would be stable in the medium term. GCI is determined by numerous and very diverse factors which were divided into three subindexes: Basic requirements, Efficiency enhancers, Innovation and...

2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 | 1999 | 1998 | 1997 | 1996 | 1995 |

The G20 CPI provides a timely measure of inflation for the G20. In the future, the G20 CPI will become part of the regular OECD monthly News Release on CPI at around one month after the reference period. Annual inflation in the G20 area was 3.0% in the year to August 2013, down from 3.2% in the year to July 2013. The G20 CPI aggregate reflects diverging patterns among the world’s largest economies. India, Argentina, Indonesia andTurkey experienced the highest annual inflation rates (equal...

(28 June 2021) Zinc prices showed 50% growth year-over-year in May 2021, an increase to $2,965 per metric ton from $1,975 in May 2020. The increase followed a two-year decline of 45% from the ten-year high of $3,500 in 2018. The price is currently 11.5% above the 5-year moving average — a figure analysts were not expecting, since zinc demand is declining in the era of COVID-19. Several key supply and demand drivers are playing a role. The upward price drivers are as follows: Disruption of...

The analysis of yield curve may well help to predict upcoming economic recession. Yield curve shows how interest rates of debt (usually government bonds) change with the increase of its term to maturity. Usually it is considered by investors that lending money for the long term is more risky than lending for the short term, as it is harder to make any predictions for the longer time horizon, i.e. how the world will change say in 10 years. That is why long-term interest rates are usually higher...

According to OECD, India is No.14 in terms of receiving FDI from other Countries in the World. China is again No.1 in getting largest amount FDI Investment. And, US is No.2 in getting FDI Investment. On BRICS, Brazil, Russia & China are present in Top 10. Who is making FDI Investment in US?. Explore Datasets Knoema to get the answer... When it comes to Investing in other Countries, India is positioned at 26. As everyone knows, US is No. 1 spot. Curious to know what was the story back in...

(9 June 2021) The aluminum price reached the value of $2,534 per metric ton on May 7th of this year, the highest price since the two-year high in April 2018. The consensus forecast for 2021 from three leading sources (the IMF, the World Bank, and Innovation and Science Australia, an advisory board to the Australian government) is $2,072 per metric ton. The rise in aluminum prices is a result of high demand in China and growing concerns that China's new climate policy, which focuses on...

(23 May 2021) Copper prices reached an all-time high of $10,512 per metric ton on May 9, marking a 130% growth since March 22, 2020. The consensus forecast from three leading sources (IMF, World Bank, and the Australian Government) for 2021 is $8,357. The average year-to-date price as of May 20 was $8,915, which means the forecasts do not reflect an expectation of further increases over the second half of the year. The copper price growth over the course of the past year was driven primarily...

Ratings show top 20 countries with a highest level of car theft and burglary rates. Select a country to view data about crime statistics in a specific region.

The Internet is defined as the worldwide interconnection of individual networks operated by government, industry, academia, and private parties. Originally the Internet served to interconnect laboratories engaged in government research. Since 1994 it has expanded to serve billions of users and a multitude of purposes in all parts of the world. The Internet is changing all the time. Two things, in our opinion, were disruptive and directive in terms of the evolution of the...

Solar activity can be easily monitored by the number of sun spots. Regular recordings of the phenomenon have been available since the middle of the 18th century, with the star’s activity reaching peaks about every 11 years. The current Solar Cycle 24, is about to pass its prime in a matter of months, according to observations. Matthew Penn of the National Solar Observatory says the strength of magnetic field in sunspots in waning, and the sunspot cycle may disappear altogether. “If this trend...

To what extent a country is prepared for the transition to knowledge-based economy, i.e. the economy that is able to efficiently stock, process and transfer knowledge, needed for a country to maintain competitiveness in today's modern world? To shed some light on this complicated question and correspondingly to help country leaders to choose strategically right directions, the World Bank developed instrument known as Knowledge Economy Index. Based on 148 indicators which serve as proxies for 4...

Since India was under British rule, the rupee was pegged to the British pound. From 1927 to 1966, 13 rupees = 1 pound. The peg was maintained until 1966 when the rupee was devalued and pegged to the U.S. dollar at a rate of 7.5 rupees = 1 dollar. This peg lasted until the U.S. dollar was devalued in 1971.

Almost all technology companies are drifted their focus to mobile based products & services. By looking at the numbers of mobile penetration on developing economies, it is a perfect sense to do so. Guess, the size of difference? It is 3x in comparing with Developed Economies. Mobile Broadband subscriptions on developing economies has crossed developed economies shares. See below the distribution on Mobile, Mobile Internet, Household with computer access & internet access around the...

There are 2,193 billionaires in the Forbes World's Billionaires ranking this year. They are the wealthiest of the wealthy. But only 71 members of this elite list are under 40 years old, with that exciting combination of money and youth.

Today we present the results of democracy development survey conducted in 29 countries of Central Europe and Eurasia by "Freedom House", the organization established in 1941 in the United States and aimed at expansion of democracy across the world, as it is the best way to fight against totalitarian ideologies which still continue to prevail in several states. The ratings presented are based on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 representing the highest level of democratic progress and 7 the lowest. The...

From time to time we hear messages about space vehicles launches and sometimes about unsuccessful attempts. The former and especially the latter ones are widely broadcasted trough the TV and the Internet, being an exciting show for the viewers. We present not less exciting statistics on space launches on the underlying charts and tables.As you can see from the first chart, the total number of space launches decreased slightly in 2012 compared to 2011 breaking general upward tendency which has...

Since 2003 until now Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) conciders about 1000 universities all over the world in ordet to build ranking of 500 ones with the highest performance in academic and research fields. Its methodology implies assessing institutions by 6 indicators including alumni (Score on Alumni) and staff (Score on Award) winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, highly cited researchers (Score on HiCi), papers published in Nature and Science (Score on N&S), papers...

The comprehensive comparison of the taxation between different countries might be hindered by the fact that tax laws in most countries are extremely complex, and tax burden falls differently on different groups in each country and sub-national unit. Still, to enable cross-country comparison one can use the highest rates for each of the following tax types in each country: The highest corporate tax rate among the 120 countries surveyed by KPMG is recorded in the United Arab Emirates, where...

As of 2012, China has close to 30% of International Reserves of World and continued to be No.1 for the past 6 years. China surpases Japan in the year of 2007, who was No.1 since 1993. Missing something that you are looking or wants to know about it? Explore more by accessing the data out here. any kind of reserve funds (in the form of gold/foregin currency) that can be passed between the central banks of different countries.

Quality of human capital is key contributor to increase of productivity and economic growth. Out of 40 countries covered by WIOD database, South Korea has the largest share of high-skilled personnel in labor force (almost 50%). The share of high-skilled labor in other BRICS countries is much lower - 16% Brazil, 14%-Russia, 7%-India, 6.5%-China. Despite relatively low share of high-skilled workers, China has already outpaced United States in terms of total number of high-qualified personnel...

The 14th comprehensive revision of the National Income and Product Accounts, covering the period 1929-2013QI (as well as the second quarter 2013 advance estimate), was released on July 31, 2013. This year’s revision (which occurs about every five years) included several major improvements to the accounts, including expanded capitalization of intellectual property products and a change to accrual accounting for defined benefit pension plans. More precisely, major conceptual changes include:...

All world countries have an access to the same petroleum prices as on international markets. However, countries' governments decide to impose different taxes according to their economic policies. As a result, the retail prices of gasoline differ considerably across countries. Explore latest global petrol prices on the charts and a map below and see how low gasoline can cost in producing countries in South America and the Middle East in contrast with the other world. In some cases, like in...

In the view of establishing post-2015 Millennium Development Goals (the United Nations led process) ONE Capmaign has conducted the research aimed to help capture interests of the world's poorest people by asking them what issues they cite as their most pressing concerns. This is about to allow the global developnent goals to be as comprehensive and relevant as possible and not to be dominated by specific interest groups influence. Source: ONE CampaignDataset: Global Development Goals Survey,...

Social Protection Index (SPI), created by Asian Development Bank (ADB), is aimed to assess adequacy of social protection programs which are realized in the countries of Asia and Pacific regions. Social protection programs refer, by definition of ADB, to the "set of policies and programs designed to reduce poverty and vulnerability by promoting efficient labor markets, diminishing people’s exposure to risks, and enhancing their capacity to protect themselves against hazards and interruption/loss...

Google reports that in the second half of 2012 company got 21 389 user data requests from federal agencies and governments from all over the world. Almost 40% of all requests comes from the U.S. authorities. In case of the U.S. authorities, Google provides some information for 90-80% of user data requests. Singapore, Taiwan and United Kingdom get some information from Google in 70-75% of requests. Russia, Turkey, Irland and Hungary have vary low chances to obtain requested information from...

Times Higher Education recognized the University of Oxford as the world's top university of 2017, snatching the top spot away from the California Institute of Technology, which had held the top rank since 2012 when it displaced Harvard University. This is the first year in the history of this ranking that a university from the UK has held the top spot. The World University Ranking by the Times Higher Education assesses research-intensive universities of different countries around the world...

On the whole, labor compenastion in the US retains stability over years. During the start of 2013 average earnings revealed moderate growth in major sectors. Utilities remaines the sector with the highest weekly earnings levels, yet showing slight decrease in the March 2013. Concerning job compensation among states, District of Columbia is the most favourable one in these terms.Sources: Population, Employment & Labor Markets - Monthly Update, April 2013, US Regional Dataset, April 2013

Источник: Госдарственная Дума Российской Федерации

Kentuky is the first state by high education expenditures, while the biggest sum of money spent on medicaid is spent by Missouri. California has the biggest budget deficit in contrast to Alaska where it is the lowest. During the period from 2010 to 2012 US budget revenues rose by 10%, meanwhile its expenditures increase was slight through the same period, only 3%.Source: US Budget Expenditure by States, April 2010-2012

HUMAN DEVELOPEMENT INDEX (HDI) - is a composite index which includes health, education, income, livelihood security and other indicators. In other words, HDI is an indicator showig how successfull are achievenemts in three main fields of human development: healthy life, knowledge and decent standard of living. The chief aim of HDI is to provide nations with comprehensive measure of environment they provide for their people in terms of opportunites for personal fulfilment. The higher the HDI the...

Looking on Margaret Thatcher's achievements it seems that the most important and noticeable are reduction of inflation and holding it on low levels and decreasing of unemployment levels. This seems even more impressive since economic theory predicts negative correlation between inflation and unemployment (Phillips Curve). Other social-economic indicators also argue in favour Margaret Thatcher's wise governance.

TomTom Congestion Index (C) compares travel times during non-congested periods (free flow) with travel times in peak hours. The difference is expressed as a percentage increase in travel time. Local roads, arterials and highways are taken into account. All data is based on actual GPS based measurements and for each city the sample size is expressed in total number of measured miles for the period.Source: TomTom European Congestion Index, April 2013

Choose parameter from the list to explore how cinematography industry is developing in different countries across the world. The following indicators are available: number of indoor cinemas (total and per capita), number of screens (total and per capita), total number of all feature films exhibited, total number of admissions, total number of gross box office receipts, attendance frequency per capita, average ticket price and admissions per indoor screen.Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics...

(12 May 2021) In 2020, worldwide motor vehicle production fell sharply, dropping 15.4% from the previous year, because of travel restriction measures and an overall decline in economic activity due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Passenger cars experienced a more significant drop in production than commercial vehicles, with decreases of 16.9% and 11.6%, respectively. This marks the third consecutive year with negative growth in global automotive vehicle production. In contrast, global electric...

United States has the fastest computer in the world. Titan, a Cray XK7 system installed at Oak Ridge, achieved 17.59 Petaflop/s (quadrillions of calculations per second) on the Linpack benchmark. Titan has 560,640 processors, including 261,632 NVIDIA K20x accelerator cores.

Cyprus crysis made people to think whether it is safe for country to have enormous financial sector in comparison to relatively small GDP. There are a lot of countries with the economies built around the financial sectors, and whose wealth denends on its developement. Luxembourg is the country which has the biggest financial sector: its bank deposits are almost 6 times as large as GDP. However only 5% of total bank assets of Luxembourg belong to local banks, the other 95% - are assets of...

In 1798, British economist Thomas Malthus created a theory - published in Essay on the Principle of Population - in accordance to which uncontrolled world population growth will inevitably lead to hunger. Malthus' primary assumption was that population grows geometrically while food production grows arithmetically. The most adequate solutions to the inevitable hunger, according to Malthus, include wars, natural disasters, and diseases. As we can see from official statistics, Malthus' fear was...

The analysis of alcohol consumption and personal welfare (GDP and GNI per capita and labor productivity) statistics shows that there is no just negative correlation between these two indicators. As it can be seen from the graphs below, interdependence between expenditures on alcoholic bevarages and personal welfare indicators can be well descripted with normal function. So, very little as well as very big amounts of alcohol consumed is bad for personal welfare, while moderate alcohol...

1) Norway Ranks 1 in Human development Index (HDI). HDI is considered a better measure of a country's progress than income growth. On the positive side, India's HDI has risen by 1.7% annually since 1980. The report lauds India's contribution by way of its spillover development effect on other countries. For instance, it points out that Indian firms have been supplying affordable medicines, medical equipment and information and communication technology to other poorer countries. 2) It...

Costs of higher education continue to soar to new highs, while high school graduate programs promise the moon and a meteoric career. Meanwhile lots of high school graduates have forced into financial bondage to banks or even bankruptcy because of student loans.

People think material prosperity predicts life evaluation and positive feeling. The new HPI results show the extent to which 151 countries across the globe produce long, happy and sustainable lives for the people that live in them. The overall index scores rank countries based on their efficiency, how many long and happy lives each produces per unit of environmental output.How do high-income Western countries compare with the countries that top the overall HPI rankings?

On 16 March 2013, the EU and IMF agreed a €10 billion deal with Cyprus to receive money from the EU-IMF. As part of the deal, a one-off bank deposit levy of 6.7% for deposits up to €100,000 and 9.9% for higher deposits, was announced on all domestic bank accounts. Cyprus is the fifth country after Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain to turn to the euro zone for financial help during the region's debt crisis and receive money from the EU-IMF.

People in Honduras, Salvador, Jamaica, Venezuela, and Guatemala have the highest probability to be shot and killed. A comparison between the rate of homicide by firearms and socio-economic indicators shows a correlation between high rates of income inequality and higher rates of homicide by firearms. Countries with GINI coefficients exceeding 0.45 are at higher risk of homicide by firearm.

Beautiful and interesting cities with rich histories can be found around the world. Unfortunately, some cities are set apart not by their beauty or history but the relative safety of tourists in those cities. How can you know if a city is safe to visit? You may want to leave emotion and sentiment aside in favor of more objective data from the likes of international agencies such as UNODC or step into another's shoes and review experience-based data sources such as Numbeo. Numbeo publishes...

Every year almost 2 million people in the world die due to AIDS, from which 1.2 million in Africa. Prevalence of HIV over the world has been decreasing since 2003. During 2003-2009 prevalence of HIV among population ages 15-49 declined from 1.04% to 0.78%. Nevertheless, low income and especially African countries continue to suffer from HIV/AIDS.

Since 2006 China has become the world's largest holder of foreign exchange reserves (including gold). By the end of 2011 Chinese foreign exchange reserves increased to 3.2 trillion US$ and accounted for almost one third of foreign exchange reserves accumulated in the world. The amount of accumulated reserves allows China to pay for its imports during almost 2 years, without selling goods abroad.

According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, District of Columbia has the highest homicide rate amongst the U.S. states (23.3 homicides per 100 000 inhabitants). Among other most unsafe states are Louisiana (13.2), Mississippi (10.2), Alabama (9.8) and New Mexico (8.3). Most safely you can feel if you are white and you are in Minnesota or New Hampshir.

The 2012-2013 Global Competitiveness Report from The World Economic Forum says that Switzerland has remained to be the most competitive economy since 2009. The United States vice versa has been losing its competitivenes positions after the world financial crisis. In 2012 the U.S. economy became only seventh in the ranking of competitiveness.

According to the Freedom House's report "Freedom in the world 2012", 35.2% (or 2.45 billion) of people in the world are NOT free in terms of political and civil rights. Diagonal of unfree countries on the world map goes from Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba in Latin and Central America, through Central Africa and Middle East to Asian countries including China.

To identify the healthiest countries in the world, Bloomberg Rankings created health scores and health-risk scores for countries with populations of at least 1 million. The risk score was subtracted from the health score to determine the country's rank. Five-year averages, when available, were used to mitigate some of the short-term year-over-year swings.

(15 June 2021) The US natural gas spot price at Henry Hub, Louisiana — the benchmark price reference for the US natural gas market and an important price reference in global gas trading — will average $3.07 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) in 2021, a 51% increase from the 2020 average, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). The agency attributes this year's price growth to rising liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports and increasing domestic natural gas consumption...

Due to the worst drought in the U.S. since 1956 and unfavorable weather conditions in the Black Sea region, world grain prices jumped in July. International Grain Counsil announced that its Grains and Oilseeds Index reached all-time high on July, 20th. If the situation around world grain supply continue deteriorate, people in poor and developing countries can suffer from increasing food prices as food expenditures in many low income countries exceeds 30% and even 40% of final consumption...

Nowadays China has become number one world exporter of personal electronic devises. In 2010 Chinese export of personal computers amounted to almost $150 billion, which was 6 times higher compared to the United States. Major byers of Chinese personal computers are the U.S., Hong-Kong, Netherlands, Germany and Japan.

The population of China currently exceeds the population of India by approximately 70 million, according to estimates from the United Nations. The UN's World Population Prospects report puts the population of China at 1.38 billion, compared to 1.31 billion for India. Other sources' estimates of current population range from 1.37 to 1.40 billion for China and from 1.28 to 1.31 billion for India. Just as current population estimates differ, so do forecasts as to when the difference in the...

Following the recommendation of experts gathered in the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) Round Table on hunger measurement, hosted at FAO headquarters in September 2011, an initial set of indicators aiming to capture various aspects of food insecurity is presented on the dashboard. "High incomes, low spending on food relative to other outlays, and significant investment in agricultural research and development (R&D) put these countries at the top of the rankings. Sub-Saharan African...

Age at first marriage varies significantly across countries. In general the higher is per capita income, the older are people who get married at first time. In developed European Countries like Germany, France, Italy, Sweeden, Norway and Finland the age at first marriage exceeds 30 years. On the other hand in low income African countries the age at first marriage is between 17-20 years for females and 23-25 years for males.

According to LINK Global Economic Outlook, published in June 2012, GDP of the European Union will not grow in 2012. In 2011 20% of the world GDP were produced in the European Union, which accounted for more than one third of world imports. It means that the recession in the European Union will inevitably cause the deceleration of the global economy.

It appears that Chinese bees produce 25 % of all honey in the world. In 2010 they collected almost 400 thousand tones of honey or about 300g of honey per Chinese citizen.

In 2009 China has become the largest merchandise exporter in the world. In 2011 Chinese exports of goods accounted for more than 10% of world merchandise exports. Still comparably low labor costs and underestimated value of yuan make it more profitable to produce goods in China and import them to domestic markets all over the world.

The $9.7 trillion global shadow economy is the second largest economy in the world after the United States, according to the 2010 estimates of the black market for 162 countries. Still, as for the more recent study, the size of the underground economy in European and other OECD countries have been decreasing steadily since 2009 and continued shrinking in 2015 averaging to 16.7 percent of official GDP. But this development was not uniform across individual countries: 10 out of 36 OECD countries...

Official statistics for any country reflect registered, transparent economic transactions, by default failing to capture the full breadth of economic activity that can emanate from the "shadow economy." The so called shadow economy is any economic activity that is deliberately concealed from public authorities to avoid payment of income, value added or other taxes; to avoid payment of social security contributions; having to meet certain legal labour market standards, such as minimum wages,...

In theory, exports from country A to country B reported by country A should be equal to imports of country B from country A reported by country B. The reality is not so ideal. For example, lets compare data on Russian imports, reported by Russia, to data on exports to Russia, reported by Russian trade partners. Russia reported that its imports from China and Germany were $48.2 bln. and $38.5 bln. in 2011. At the same time China and Germany reported that their exports to Russia were $38.9 bln....

More than four years in a row (2009-2012) unemployment in the US exceeded 8%. After the unemployment rate reached its peak of 10% in October 2009, it decreased by 5 percentage points so far and stayed at 5% in March 2016. Unemployment in California, which accounts for about 13% of total US GDP, is 5.5%.

It is interesting that there is no relationship between actual level of corruption in the country and how people assess government's actions in the fight against corruption. In such a "clean" from corruption countries like Finland, Norway, Switzerland or Canada over 50% of respondents assess government's actions in the fight against corruption as ineffective. Similarly people estimate their governments in much more corrupted countries like Russia, China and Brazil. One conclusion that...

(13 May 2021) Brent crude oil prices will average $62.26 per barrel in 2021 and $60.74 per barrel in 2022 according to the forecast in the most recent Short-Term Energy Outlook from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). This represents a rebound from the 2020 average of $41.69 per barrel, but it is still lower than pre-COVID levels. The International Monetary Fund, in its latest release of the World Economic Outlook, predicts a similar recovery scenario, with Brent oil prices rising...

(10 June 2011) While the decline in demand during the world economic crisis of 2008-2009 caused troubles for many car producers, especially in the United States, Europe, and Japan, global long term prospects for the automotive industry remain promising. Car sales in emerging countries are well below market saturation levels. Cases in point: India and China. These two countries alone represent almost 40 percent of the world's population and today there are less than 200 passenger cars per 1,000...

According to common sense, the more time you spend at work, the higher earnings you hope to get. Cross country comparison shows opposite result. The higher is the number of hours worked by employees, the smaller are their wages. For example, Greece, with its 5.5 hours, is among top 10 countries having the longest work day. Nevertheless, per capita income in Greece much lower compared to Netherlands, Germany, Norway, France or Luxemburg, where one employee works no more than 4 hours per day....

(Updated: 09 June 2021) How does the composition of people's daily diets vary across countries? Ideally, food intake should be balanced, which requires access to fresh vegetables and fruits, grains, proteins (meats and beans), dairy products, and healthy oils while minimizing or reducing consumption of alcohol, salt, and sugar. For a variety of reasons, income being paramount, disparities in access to quality food undermine the average daily diets of millions of people worldwide. A comparison...

According to the latest BP Statistical Review of World Energy, total global reserves, by fossil fuel, are now: Coal - 1,139 billion tonnes Natural Gas - 187 trillion cubic meters Crude Oil - 1,707 billion barrels While these volumes may seem large at a glance, at today's level of extraction and production rates, BP's estimated proved reserves*, by fossil fuel, would be exhausted as follows: Coal - year 2169 Natural Gas - year 2068 Crude Oil - year 2066 BP dutifully acknowledges the...

The USA has the highest research and development expenditures in the world. In 2008 it was almost $400 billions or 2.8% of GDP. The gap between the U.S. and other countries is essential. The rest from the top five (Japan, China, Germany and France) only taken together spend as much as the U.S. The model of R&D expenditures differs from country to country. For example, expenditures on basic research account for 17% in total R&D expenditures in the U.S. compared to only 5% in...

In 1950 New York with its 12.3 million people was the largest urban agglomeration. It was followed by Tokyo (11.3 mln.), London (8.4 mln.), Paris (6.3 mln.) and Moscow (5.4 mln.). Only 4 cities from the former top 10 stay there 60 years later. Population of Tokyo more than trippled (reached almost 37 millions in 2010) and now it is the largest urban agglomeration on Earth. Population of New York increased by 8 millions since 1950, and now it is the fouth largest urban agglomeration. New...

Africa is a continent with 1 billion people, which have an average income about $250 per person in a month. African population is young and fast growing. More then 40% of people are under 14 years old and average annual growth of population is 2.3%. On average, every African women has more than 4 children. Only 16% of population use internet. No more them 64% are provided by water supply and less then 40% of population have sanitation facilities. Life expectancy at birth of average African...

According to African Economic Outlook (AEO), released at the end of May, 2012, African economy will perform solid and stable expansion in 2012-2013. AEO projects that economic growth in Africa will accelerate to 4.5% in 2012 and even to 4.8% in 2013. Among the largest African economies Nigeria, Angola and Ethiopia will show booming (7% and above) GDP growth rates. Click on any country in the table to see its GDP growth rates during 2003-2011 and projections for 2012-2013.

No matter your perspective on global warming, data confirms immense growth of CO2 emissions during the period from 1753-2004, from 3 million to 4.2 billion metric tons of carbon. China and the United States combined are responsible for almost 40 percent of today's global CO2 emissions.On a per capita basis, US CO2 emissions stabilized at 5 metric tons per person in the early 1980s. In contrast, China's per capita CO2 emissions are relatively low at 1.4 metric tons. Such per capita...

Politics has long been considered as a 'man's world.' Even today, women remain significantly underrepresented in legislative and executive branches of government globally despite research that suggests a strong connection between women in leadership and economic and democratic gains. Today one-fifth of the world's parliamentarians and less than one quarter of national leaders are women. Rwanda, Cuba and Bolivia have the highest share of women parliamentarians, however, Europe has...

Do you know which of the US states consume more energy, where is the lowest price for electricity or what is the amount of consumed fuel ethanol by US State? Explore US Regional Energy Statistics form EIA. Global Energy Statistics More Energy Statistics for the U.S. ...

Proportion of urban population in developing world increased by 10 percentage points during 1990-2010 and reached 45% in 2010. Income growth reduced the proportion of urban population living in slums from 46% in 1990 to 33% in 2010. Nevertheless, population living in slums continues to grow and in 2010 it amounted to 828 million people (+171 million since 1990). More than half of increase comes from Sub-Saharan Africa, where population living in slums grew by 97 million from 1990.

According to FAO, more developed countries have higher food losses and waste at final consimption, compared to developing world. A quarter of consumed cereals, near 20% of roots & tubers, fruits & vegetables, 17% of fish & seafood, about 10% of meat and milk, 4% of oilseeds & pulses are lost as a waste in more developed countries at a stage of final consumption.

Texas, California, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida produce 31.5% of all fossil fuel CO2 emissions in the US.Select indicator in the drop-down window at the right to visualize it on the map.Then click on any state on the map to see at the chart how emissions canged since 1960.

What makes economy grow? Although known basic answers stay conceptual and not measurable, the theory of production function proposes some kind of post factum estimates. In accordance with it, capital, labor and productivity totally account for the growth of economy during any defined period. By selecting a country in the drop-down window at the right, you will see what factors contributes to economic growth of the selected country. Explore with EU KLEMS and Knoema whether it's the amount of...

"The Reporters Without Borders index, which is published each year, measures the state of media freedom throughout the world. It reflects the degree of freedom that journalists, news media and netizens enjoy in each country, and the efforts made by the authorities to respect and ensure respect for this freedom." - the Press Freedom Index Report 2011-2012. The lower Press Freedom Index, the more free the state of media.

(October 2016) - Renewable energy resources have increasingly become mainstream energy soures worldwide, catapulted by new capacity in developing countries. Depending on the source, renewable energy has or is poised to surpass coal to become the world's largest source of electrical power capacity. The International Energy Agency (IEA) in its most recent medium-term renewable market report said that this transition occurred during 2015, while according to the latest energy outlook by the US...