Top economies
Frequently asked questions
Why are World / regions / income groups missing from "Top economies"?
The WDI country list mixes real economies with aggregates (World, region groups, income groups). Summing or ranking without excluding these double-counts -- a country's value is also present under its region's row and its income group's row. This app always filters them out of rankings by default.
Why does "GDP per capita" have three different variants (current, real, PPP)?
"Current US$" is nominal, not adjusted for inflation. "Constant 2015 US$" (real terms) strips out inflation so you can compare purchasing power across years within one country. "PPP" adjusts for cost-of-living differences between countries, useful for cross-country comparison in a single year. Constant-price and PPP series rebase their reference year periodically -- values from different data vintages using the same indicator code aren't always directly comparable.
Why are some years or countries just missing?
WDI coverage is sparse and ragged by design -- most country/indicator pairs have gaps, sometimes entire missing decades. A missing data point means no observation was published, never zero.
Where does this data come from?
World Bank World Development Indicators, fetched via the World Bank's public API and loaded with the open-source wdi-compact tool. This app is a read-only viewer over a curated set of GDP and economy indicators -- it does not modify or estimate any values.