Ooh, Data!
By One of my colleagues at Patterson threw this together for a presentation to his Economic Statecraft class:
| GDP per capita, PPP (constant 2005 international $) | |||||
| 1990 | 2008 | Percent change, 1990-2008 | Avg. Annual Pct. Chg, 1991-2008 | ||
| Armenia | 2,936 | 5,611 | 91.1% | 3.7% | |
| Azerbaijan | 4,754 | 8,102 | 70.4% | 3.0% | |
| Belarus | 6,434 | 11,333 | 76.1% | 3.2% | |
| Estonia | 10,147 | 18,885 | 86.1% | 3.5% | |
| Georgia | 5,398 | 4,526 | -16.2% | -1.0% | |
| Kazakhstan | 7,089 | 10,458 | 47.5% | 2.2% | |
| Kyrgyz Republic | 2,505 | 2,023 | -19.3% | -1.2% | |
| Latvia | 9,464 | 14,639 | 54.7% | 2.5% | |
| Lithuania | 11,879 | 16,399 | 38.0% | 1.8% | |
| Moldova | 3,882 | 2,704 | -30.3% | -2.0% | |
| Russian Federation | 12,630 | 14,706 | 16.4% | 0.8% | |
| Tajikistan | 3,064 | 1,761 | -42.5% | -3.0% | |
| Turkmenistan | 3,749 | 6,119 | 63.2% | 2.8% | |
| Ukraine | 8,063 | 6,721 | -16.6% | -1.0% | |
| Uzbekistan | 2,002 | 2,455 | 22.6% | 1.1% | |
| Former Soviet Union | 9,446 | 10,618 | 12.4% | 0.7% | |
| Poland | 8,164 | 16,388 | 100.7% | 3.9% | |
| Romania | 7,851 | 11,761 | 49.8% | 2.3% | |
| Hungary | 12,394 | 18,040 | 45.6% | 2.1% | |
| Bulgaria | 7,536 | 11,259 | 49.4% | 2.3% | |
| Mongolia | 2,332 | 3,297 | 41.3% | 1.9% | |
The data lead to questions:
This data suggests some countries are much better off than they were in 1990, some much worse off.
1. Do these numbers feel right to you, given your knowledge of home country, and neighboring countries?
2. Assuming the numbers are correct, do you have any hypotheses about why the results are so varied?
Thoughts?