Access (economics) - The Access Index

The Access Index

To quantify the degrees and impacts of Access, SRI created the Access Index, a list of 75 nations ranked from the most accessible to the least, using a scoring system devised by SRI researchers and drawing upon publicly available information from sources including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the countries themselves.

In order to analyze and measure the potential impact of Access on nations, the research team selected 22 criteria, which they grouped under four headings:

• Trade indicators that measure the “openness” of an economy from an international trade perspective (tariff revenues, hidden import barriers, etc.).

• Transport indicators that measure the extent of Access supported by the existing transportation infrastructure (port infrastructure, air transport infrastructure, etc.) in each country.

• Telecommunications indicators that measure hardware (main telephone lines, personal computers, etc.), service availability (number of mobile telephone subscribers, speed of Internet access, etc.), and costs of service (cellular connection charges, business and residential telephone monthly subscriber charges, etc.).

• News, Media, and Information Services indicators that measure the ability to obtain information through various media (televisions, radios, newspapers, etc.).

Drawing upon empirical data that fell under each of these headings, nations were awarded a total point score and ranking for each nation reflecting their cumulative degrees of Access. The overall ranking is the one published here.

Three complementary indexes measure the opportunities Access provides to people, businesses and nations overall. These three “opportunity” indexes gauge the extent to which different groups of potential Access beneficiaries are able to leverage and use Access to improve their current condition and future prospects. Each of these categories was then broken down again into four sub-categories in which each nation was also ranked. (SRI notes: “In this series of reports, the terms ‘nation’ and ‘country’ are used to describe economies that are generally recognized by international organizations as operating autonomously. As used in these reports, neither term is meant to imply sovereignty or independence of a particular economy included in the reports.”)

For example, while Hong Kong tops the Access Index overall, it did not finish first in any of the three sub-categories. Those were:

• Iceland. #1 in opportunities for its People, finishing #3 in the sub-category of “Empowerment,” #1 in “Connection,” #1 in “Well-Being,” #27 in “Choice & Expectations,” and #17 in the overall Access Index. Its high finish in this category “indicates that Icelanders, who are among the world’s most well-educated, are able to use their education to achieve a higher level of people-related opportunities from Access,” according to the report.

• Germany. #1 in opportunities for Businesses, finishing #2 in “Supply Chain Strength,” #6 in “Innovation,” #24 in “Growth & Competitiveness,” #2 in Market Reach, and #7 in the overall Access Index.

• Ireland. #1 in opportunities as a Nation, finishing #13 in “Broader Markets,” #16 in “Global Connections,” #8 in “National & International Cohesion,” #1 in “Growth & Prosperity,” and #23 overall.

The report’s authors correlated these rankings with each nation’s economic performance data and found that:

• Higher levels of Access enable higher economic growth. The top 10 countries in the Access Index had an average GDP per capita growth rate of 22.6 percent from 1993–2003, whereas growth among the bottom 10 scorers was just 14.1 percent over the same period.

• Greater Access relates strongly to higher levels of income. In addition, as nations develop, their citizens — both people and businesses — typically demand greater Access.

• Physical and information Access are closely aligned for the countries studied. Countries with advanced economies tend to have very high levels of both physical and information Access, though the expansion of physical and information Access may not proceed in tandem.

• Access is critical for economic survival and growth, especially for nations that have small internal markets, have limited domestic resources, and/or rely heavily on international trade for economic survival and growth — such as those that topped the Index: Hong Kong (#1), Singapore (#2), Denmark (#3) Switzerland (#4), Netherlands (#5), and Finland (#6).

Other nations worth noting include:

• The United States (#12), falls behind Hong Kong, Singapore, and 10 Western European nations, but finished #1 in several sub-categories, including personal “Choice & Expectations,” corporate “Supply Chain Strength,” and the nation’s ability to connect with “Broader Markets.”

• China (#52) finished surprisingly low, considering its very high GDP growth. While China scored high in sub-categories such as “Broader Markets” (#8) and “Choice & Expectations,” (#8), its overall score was dragged down by low rankings in categories such as “Empowerment,” (#49) and “Connection,” (#67) which reflect a society that is still largely closed.

• OPEC nations, including invitee Mexico (#45), Indonesia (#60), Venezuela (#62), invitee Bolivia (#66), prospective member Ecuador (#71), and Nigeria (#74) all appeared in the bottom half of the Index. The low levels of Access in these nations may partially reflect what is alternately called the “resource curse” or “Dutch disease,” in which economies fail to diversify and compete globally due to a cushion of large oil reserves and high prices.