Which economy did best in 2023?

A lmost everyone expected a global recession in 2023, as central bankers fought high inflation. They were wrong. Global GDP has probably grown by 3%. Job markets have held up. Inflation is on the way down. Stockmarkets have risen by 20%. But this aggregate performance conceals wide variation. The Economist has compiled data on five economic and financial indicators—inflation, “inflation breadth”, GDP , jobs and stockmarket performance—for 35 mostly rich countries. We have ranked them according to how well they have done on these measures, creating an overall score for each. The table below shows the rankings, and some surprising…