Analysing Economic and Financial Power of Different Countries at the End of the Twentieth Century

Abstract

This paper offers further evidence to “The Economist” index of economic power developed by Pujol (2002, 2003, and 2009). The original index is composite by construction and it gives information about year 2000, comparing the results with year 1990. Testing the robustness of the ranking of selected countries obtained by Pujol’s index; this paper applies the same methodology to two specific years: 1995 and 2001. The research tries to ascertain if the evolution of the rank- ing of countries among years 1990 and 2000 is not merely a chance. The number of times each country appears in tables and graphs of the different “The Economist” issues for year 1995 confirms the evolution of the index between 1990 and 2000. Data for year 2001 gives continuity and support to the ranking developed in year 2000. The data analyzed from this magazine make sense, because at the end it gives the same information that the one obtained from other more tradi- tional and sophisticated ways. Empirical results tend to confirm that unconventional composite index can produce relevant data sets for scientists and practitioners.