China, the US and the EU are the top global economies and despite the exit of the UK from the European Union, the bloc is similar in economic size to the other two giants.
The International Comparison Program (ICP) at the World Bank reported in May this year that in 2017 the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the European Union based on the current 27 member states, accounted for 16.0% of global GDP, expressed in Purchasing Power Standards (PPS). China and the United States were the 2 biggest economies, with shares of 16.4% and 16.3%, respectively. India was fourth at 6.7%, followed by Japan with 4.3%.
Germany alone had a ratio of 3.7% putting it at 5th in the global ranking by country and it compared with the United Kindom's rate of 2.5%, which ranks the latter with Brazil, Indonesia and Mexico.
A country's GDP is measured in local prices and in its own currency but to produce valid cross-country comparisons it's necessary to have a common measure of value.
The Purchasing Power Standard (PPS) is a currency unit that eliminates price level differences between countries. One PPS, for example, buys the same volume of goods and services in all countries.
There are some limitations and for example, a standard basket of food in Western Europe may differ to that in other regions of the world while some country data may only relate to the capital city.
The data are published by the Global Office of the ICP and are the result of the 2017 round of the ICP.
There are six global regions of which all but one are overseen by the ICP. The remaining region is covered by the Eurostat-OECD PPP Program. Eurostat, the EU's statistical office, provides the required data for 37 European countries and the OECD for 12 non-European countries.
In total, 176 countries participated fully in the 2017 round of the ICP.
Data for Luxembourg are exaggerated as over 40% of its workforce live in adjacent countries.
The ICP also ranked countries based on AIC (actual individual consumption per capita). This metric captures the individual spending by consumers on public and private goods and services in an economy. Again price differences are stripped out and the AIC is regarded as a proxy for material standard of living.
In Europe in the top tier: are Norway (35,819); Switzerland (35,344); Germany (34,385); Austria (33,412); UK (32,445); Denmark (32,306); Belgium (32,066); Netherlands (31,775); Finland (31,526); Sweden (31,514) and France (30,740).
Ireland is in the second tier: Italy (27,870); Ireland (26,744); Cyprus (26,378); Spain (25,763); Lithuania (24,753); Portugal (23,148); Czech Republic (23,054); Slovenia (22,205); Poland (21,265) and Estonia (20,554).
