A Simple Measure of Cost: Per Capita Income

To make any assessment of value we want to look at the attributes of a country relative to their costs. Absent other indications of productivity or indications of what you get for workers, we’d expect relative income levels alone to give you some indication of a country’s relative future growth, albeit a naïve one. Through time, countries with cheap workers and low skills can leverage existing technology to increase their productive ability. Similarly, the richest countries generally do not continue to outperform the rest of the world, as their competitive advantages are eaten away by technology transfers to less competitive economies, and the normal behavior of most economies is to increasingly savor the fruits of success by working and investing less.

为了对价值进行任何评估，我们想要查看一个国家相对于其成本的属性。没有其他迹象表明生产力或者你对工人的看法，我们预期相对收入水平可以让您了解一个国家相对未来增长的一些迹象，尽管这是一个天真的。随着时间的推移，廉价工人和低技能的国家可以利用现有技术来提高其生产能力。同样，最富有的国家一般不会继续跑赢世界其他地区，因为他们的竞争优势被技术转让所消耗的竞争力较弱的经济体系，而大多数经济体的正常行为就是越来越多地通过工作和投资少

Our measure of cost simply compares the nominal GDP per capita of a given country relative to the developed world average in log terms, which we believe is more reflective of the impact of differences in income levels. That’s based on our intuition that, from a competitiveness perspective, a $2,000 difference is more meaningful between one country that makes $500 and one that makes $2,500 than between countries that make $40,000 and $42,000 respectively. Again, this measure of cost is one side of the picture. We combine it with our assessment of various indications of what a country offers to understand its productivity and competitiveness (what it offers relative to its cost).

我们的成本衡量标准简单地比较了一个特定国家的人均国内生产总值与发达国家平均水平的对数值，我们认为这反映了收入水平差异的影响。这是基于我们的直觉，从竞争力的角度来看，一个赚500美元的国家之间的差距更为有意义，另外一个国家之间的收益分别为4万美元和42,000美元。再次，这个措施的成本是图片的一面。我们结合我们对各国提供的各种迹象的评估，以了解其生产力和竞争力（相对于其成本而言）。

Today, India is by far the lowest-cost country in our sample. Indian per capita GDP is about $1500, which is much lower than that of many of the major developing world countries like China, Mexico, Brazil, Russia, or Korea. Even with its significant increase in cost in recent years, China’s cost is still one of the lowest in the world. Its per capita income sits at just $7,000, roughly 70% that of Mexico. However, the differences in cost by area are significant so that growth in China will largely depend on how development will occur in areas, and among people, that are inexpensive. While developed world countries in general have relatively high incomes, it’s worth noting some differentiation between those countries—for example, GDP per capita in the poorest European countries like Spain and Greece is only about two-thirds as high as the per capita incomes of the richest developed countries, like the US and Japan. You’ll see below that based on how we look at cost, we don’t make much of the difference in cost between the developed countries—all are pretty expensive—but we believe there is a big difference between the cheapest emerging countries, like India and China, and the rest (including other countries like Argentina and Brazil).

今天，印度是我们样本中成本最低的国家。印度人均国内生产总值约为1500美元，远低于许多主要发展中国家，如中国，墨西哥，巴西，俄罗斯或韩国。即使近年来成本大幅上涨，中国的成本仍然是世界上最低的。其人均收入仅为7,000美元，约为墨西哥的70％。然而，按地区划分的成本差异很大，因此中国的增长将在很大程度上取决于区域和人民之间的便宜发展。虽然发达世界国家的收入总体较高，但值得注意的是这些国家之间存在差异，例如西班牙和希腊最贫穷的欧洲国家的人均国内生产总值只有人均收入的三分之二最富有的发达国家，如美国和日本。您将在下面看到，基于我们如何看待成本，我们没有太多的发达国家之间的成本差异 - 这都是相当昂贵的 - 但是我们认为最便宜的新兴国家之间有很大的区别，比如印度和中国，还有其他国家（包括其他国家，如阿根廷和巴西）。