We use principal component analysis (PCA) to extract the essential information contained in 10 different country rankings, measuring different country characteristics such as GDP per capita, human development, quality of governance, environmental quality and business environment. Globally, the first principal component accounts for about 82 per cent of the variation across countries, and the first three principal components account for over 92 per cent. The percentages are similar for regions such as Europe, North America and Asia, but lower for South America and Africa, but even in the last of these regions, the first three principal components account for 86 per cent of the variation. Excluding GDP per capita does not change our results appreciably. The analysis suggests that various different indices may add relatively little new information to more basic measures of development. Regional comparisons suggest that Asia’s economic structures, as implied by the rankings, may be closer to those of Europe and North America than South America and Africa. JEL Codes: C38, O1, O57

中文翻译：

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我们可以从国家的全球和区域排名中学到什么？

我们使用主成分分析（PCA）来提取10个不同国家/地区排名中包含的基本信息，以衡量不同国家/地区的特征，例如人均GDP，人类发展，治理质量，环境质量和商业环境。在全球范围内，第一个主要成分约占各国差异的82％，而前三个主要成分约占92％。欧洲，北美和亚洲等地区的百分比相似，但南美和非洲的百分比较低，但即使在这些地区的最后一个地区，前三个主要成分也占差异的86％。排除人均GDP不会明显改变我们的结果。分析表明，各种不同的指标可能会向相对较基本的发展指标添加相对较少的新信息。区域比较表明，排名所隐含的亚洲经济结构可能比南美和非洲更接近欧洲和北美。JEL代码：C38，O1，O57