MapGEO

Geography facts, with the reasoning attached.

Economic geography: what countries actually sell

A country's export list is a blunter description of it than any statistic, and for a good number of them it is startlingly short. One product, one buyer, and the whole national budget attached to a price nobody at home sets.

  1. Which landlocked country has among the highest GDP per person in the world?

    Luxembourg

    Luxembourg regularly tops GDP-per-person tables at well over 100,000 dollars, driven by finance and by cross-border workers counted in output but not population.

    Source: IMF World Economic Outlook

  2. Roughly how many countries use the euro as their official currency?

    About 20

    Twenty EU members use the euro, plus a handful of microstates and territories by agreement or unilaterally. The EU has 27 members, so not all use it.

    Source: European Central Bank

  3. Which country abandoned its own currency for the US dollar in 2000?

    Ecuador

    After hyperinflation and a banking collapse, Ecuador adopted the dollar outright. El Salvador and Panama also use it, and several other economies are partially dollarised.

    Source: Central Bank of Ecuador

  4. Nauru was once among the richest countries per person because of what?

    Phosphate

    Guano-derived phosphate made Nauru extraordinarily wealthy in the 1970s and 80s. The deposits ran out, leaving about 80 percent of the island mined out and largely uninhabitable.

    Source: Nauru government and Pacific Community reports

  5. Which country produces the most coffee?

    Brazil

    Brazil has led production for over 150 years, growing roughly a third of the world's coffee. Vietnam is second and dominates robusta; Ethiopia is where the plant originated.

    Source: International Coffee Organization

  6. Which country has the world's largest merchant shipping fleet by registered tonnage?

    Panama

    Panama operates an open registry, so ships from all over the world fly its flag for regulatory and tax reasons. Liberia and the Marshall Islands run the next largest.

    Source: UNCTAD Review of Maritime Transport

  7. In some countries, money sent home by citizens abroad is worth what share of the economy?

    More than a quarter of GDP

    Remittances exceed 25 percent of GDP in several countries including Tajikistan, Tonga and Lebanon in recent years. That is often more than foreign aid and investment combined.

    Source: World Bank remittance data

  8. Which country's economy is dominated by selling its internet domain name?

    Tuvalu, with .tv

    Tuvalu licenses .tv for a substantial share of national revenue, historically around a tenth of government income for a country of roughly 11,000 people.

    Source: Tuvaluan government budget statements

  9. What makes measuring the 'most expensive city' so inconsistent between surveys?

    They price different baskets

    Some indices price an expatriate executive's lifestyle, others a local household's. Singapore, Zurich, Hong Kong and New York trade places depending on which basket is used.

    Source: EIU Worldwide Cost of Living; Mercer Cost of Living surveys

  10. Which is larger: the economy of California, or that of most countries?

    It ranks about fifth

    California's output is comparable with Germany's or Japan's, putting it around fourth or fifth if it were counted as a country.

    Source: US Bureau of Economic Analysis; IMF country GDP