DATA
Indicator Definition
Each indicator included in the Global Hegemony Index (GHI) is defined based on its relevance to the multidimensional exercise of power in the international system. The indicators span six key domains—military, economic, financial, technological, demographic, and cultural—and are operationalized using standardized and verifiable data from original research and reputable sources.
| Category | Indicator | Technical Description | Data Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Military power (capacity) Weight: 35 | Military expenditure | A country's total military expenditure in a given year | Military expenditure was coded based on the SIPRI-World Bank dataset. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.CD military expenditure. Russia's 1991-1997 data are from https://nuke.fas.org/guide/russia/agency/mo-budget.htm. EU data are from SIPRI The data for the USSR (1960-1990), China (1960-1986), and Indonesia (1960-1974) are from the Correlates of War datasets. https://correlatesofwar.org/data-sets/national-material-capabilities/ |
| Nuclear warheads | A country's total stock of nuclear warheads | FAS.org dataset for the 1991-2021 period. India's data for the 1991-1997 period are absent since its data on FAS are displayed as "null," not "0." Many sources said that weaponization of India's nuclear warheads was initiated in 1994. Imputation of the null data was conducted as follows: 1991-1993: 0, 1994: 1, 1995-1997: 2 | |
| ICBMs | A country's total stock of ICBMs | SIPRI yearbook dataset. EU's figures were included by counting those of the member states. | |
| SLBMs | A country's total stock of SLBMs | SIPRI yearbook dataset. EU's figures were included by counting those of the member states. | |
| Strategic bombers | A country's total stock of strategic bombers | SIPRI yearbook dataset. EU's figures were included by counting those of the member states. | |
| Military satellites | A country's total stock of military satellites | Union of Concerned Scientists https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/satellite-database Japan's data were updated using various internet sources. | |
| Active/reserve forces | A country's total of active forces and paramilitary forces | World Bank dataset https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.TOTL.P1 military personnel UK data are from https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/quarterly-service-personnel-statistics-2022/quarterly-service-personnel-statistics-1-july-2022. EU data are from SIPRI. All the data (1960-1984) and as well as USSR data (1960-1990) are from Correlates of War datasets. https://correlatesofwar.org/data-sets/national-material-capabilities/ | |
| Aircraft carriers | A country's total stock of aircraft carriers | https://worldpopulace.com/aircraft-carriers-by-country/. | |
| Helicopter carriers | A country's total stock of helicopter carriers | https://worldpopulace.com/aircraft-carriers-by-country/. | |
| Military power (leadership & influence) Weight: 5 | Military alliances | A country's total number of military alliances | CoW (Correlates of War) dataset https://correlatesofwar.org/data-sets/formal-alliances/. Data for the 2013-2022 period are derived from the datasets of various sources such as government homepages, Wikipedia and newspaper articles. The allies of the USSR in 1991 included non-European satellite states (Afghanistan, Cuba, Laos, Libya, Mali, Mongolia, North Korea, Syria and Vietnam. |
| Strategic military & anti-terror cooperation | A country's total memberships in non-treaty security and anti-terror organizations (Five Eyes, AUKUS, Quad, BRICS, Shanghai Cooperation Organization) and its organizational power within those organizations are measured based on the following criteria: (a) when a country is the sole convenor of an organization, its annual score is based on the total number of member states; (b) when a country works in partnership with others, its annual score is based on the even division of the total score among the organizing member states; (c) when a country is simply a member, its score is 1. For instance, the UK is a co-organizer of Five Eyes; thus, its score is 2.5. | Various sources | |
| Economic power (capacity) Weight: 50 | GDP | GDP at purchaser's prices refers to the sum of gross value added by all resident producers in an economy, plus product taxes and minus subsidies not included in the value of the products. It is calculated without deductions for the depreciation of fabricated assets or for the depletion and degradation of natural resources. | https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD?most_recent_year_desc=false&start=2022 Data are presented in constant 2015 prices and expressed in US dollars. |
| GDP per capita | GDP per capita is calculated by dividing a country's gross domestic product (GDP) by its midyear population. GDP represents the total gross value added by all resident producers in the economy, plus product taxes and minus subsidies not included in the value of the products. It is measured without deductions for the depreciation of fabricated assets or for the depletion and degradation of natural resources. | https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD?most_recent_year_desc=false&start=2022 Data are presented in constant 2015 prices and expressed in US dollars. | |
| Economic power (leadership & influence) Weight: 5 | Export volume | Imports and exports of goods and services represent the value of all goods and market services exchanged with the rest of the world. These figures include the value of merchandise, freight, insurance, transport, travel, royalties, license fees, and a range of other services—such as communication, construction, financial, information, business, personal, and government services. They exclude compensation of employees, investment income (formerly referred to as factor services), and transfer payments. Data are presented in constant 2015 prices and expressed in US dollars. | https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.EXP.GNFS.KD?most_recent_year_desc=false Data are in constant 2015 prices, expressed in U.S. |
| Import volume | https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.IMP.GNFS.KD?most_recent_year_desc=false Data are in constant 2015 prices, expressed in U.S. | ||
| Bilateral & multilateral FTAs | Data were collected from https://rtais.wto.org/UI/PublicMaintainRTAHome.aspx. EU=1, ASEAN=1. every RTA is 1. France and Germany's FTA partners in 1991 and 1992 were the EU's FTA partners. Source: WTO RTA database (RTAs in force, including accessions) https://rtais.wto.org/UI/PublicAllRTAListAccession.aspx | ||
| Global firms | Top 100 global firms | https://brandirectory.com/rankings/global/table | |
| UN contribution | https://www.un.org/en/ga/contributions/Scale%20of%20Assessments%20for%20RB%201946-2027.pdf (ODA grant equivalent – Million US dollars) https://www.un.org/en/ga/contributions/previousrpts.shtml. The EU figure represents the aggregate sum of contributions from its member states. Data for Germany in 1991 are unavailable; accordingly, the 1991 figure is derived from the combined data of East and West Germany for that year (9.36%). Similarly, data for the Republic of Korea (ROK) in 1991 are not available, so the 1992 figure is used as a proxy. In the case of Russia, 1991 data are also unavailable; therefore, data from the Soviet Union for that year are used as a substitute. | ||
| ODA | ODA refers to the net ODA share of each country. | OECD Data Live dataset https://db.nomics.world/OECD/DP_LIVE?dimensions=%7B%22INDICATOR%22%3A%5B%22NODA%22%5D%2C%22SUBJECT%22%3A%5B%22ODAFLOWS%22%5D%2C%22MEASURE%22%3A%5B%22MLN_USD%22%5D%7D&q=oda&tab=list Indicator: Net ODA, Subject: ODA flows basis, Measure: Million US dollars https://data.oecd.org/oda/net-oda.htm Non-DAC countries' ODA was is displayed as 0. EU data is an aggregate sum of member state data. | |
| Financial power | Currency shares as global payment currencies | Share of currency in total global payment currencies | https://www.swift.com/our-solutions/compliance-and-shared-services/business-intelligence/renminbi/rmb-tracker/rmb-tracker-document-centre (2020-2023) Data from 2012-2019 are from Hyoung-kyu Chey. The International Political Economy of the Renminbi: Currency Internationalization and Reactive Currency Statecraft (Routledge, 2022), p. 42. For the 2012-2019 period, only the shares of USD, EUR, JPY, GBP, and CNY were counted, while the other currencies were given a default score of 0.5, except for CAD and AUD, which were given a score of 1.0. For the 2020-2022 period, only currencies whose global payment shares exceeded 1.0 were included. |
| Financial power | World currency composition of official foreign exchange reserves | The data are drawn from the IMF's World Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves (COFER) dataset, which covers the period from 1995 to the present. For details, see: https://data.imf.org/regular.aspx?key=41175. Allocated reserves are reported in US dollars, euros, Chinese renminbi, Japanese yen, pounds sterling, Australian dollars, and Canadian dollars. Unallocated reserves held in other currencies are assigned a default value of 1.0. | |
| Technical power (capacity) | R&D | A country's research and development expenditure as a percentage of GDP | Refer to World Bank (2024): Research and development expenditure (% of GDP). This data covers 1999 to the present. https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators/Series/GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZS# Occasionally missing data were filled using values from preceding years. Data for 2023 are based on 2022 figures. |
| Digitalization | The index scores of the IMD World Digital Competitiveness ranking based on knowledge, technology, and future readiness | IMD World Digital Competitiveness Ranking. https://www.imd.org/centers/wcc/world-competitiveness-center/rankings/world-digital-competitiveness-ranking/ China's scores represent the average of mainland China and Hong Kong, calculated by dividing the combined total by two. The EU's scores are derived from the sum of its member states' scores divided by 27. Malta's data are not available. Following Brexit, the EU's scores are based on the sum of the scores of its remaining member states divided by 26. As Russia's data for 2022 are unavailable due to the war in Ukraine, its 2021 score is used as a proxy. | |
| Private investment in AI | A country's total volume of AI private investment | The Artificial Intelligence Index Report compiled by the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence https://aiindex.stanford.edu/report/ Since private investment data for the top-ranking countries—such as the top 15 in 2022—is available, lower-ranking countries with missing data were assigned a symbolic value of US$0.1 billion. The EU's figures in 2022 are the sum of Germany, France, and Finland, shown in the report plus the symbolic value of 100 million dollars for the remaining 24 EU members (4.73+2.4=7.13). The EU's figures in 2023 are the sum of Germany, France, Sweden, and Spain, shown in the report plus the symbolic value of 100 million dollars for the remaining 24 EU members (5.85+2.4=8.25). | |
| Technical power (leadership & influence) | Patents | Patent data are measured using two indicators: patent applications by residents and patent applications by nonresidents, recorded by country. | nonresidents: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IP.PAT.NRES?most_recent_year_desc=false residents: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IP.PAT.RESD?most_recent_year_desc=false |
| Cultural power (capacity) | UNESCO Heritage Sites | A country's total number of UNESCO heritage sites | from https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/. |
| Cultural power (leadership & influence) | Organizers of 3 major international events | The cumulative number of times a country has hosted the Summer and Winter Olympic Games, the FIFA World Cup finals, and the World Expo. | https://stillmed.olympics.com/media/Documents/Olympic-Games/Factsheets/The-Games-of-the-Olympiad.pdf?_ga=2.242454849.273763677.1706001648-248012484.1706001648 https://stillmed.olympics.com/media/Documents/Olympic-Games/Factsheets/The-Olympic-Winter-Games.pdf?_ga=2.68270290.273763677.1706001648-248012484.1706001648 https://www.fifa.com/fifaplus/en/articles/world-cup-champions-1982-2022-italy-argentina-germany-brazil-france-spain https://www.bie-paris.org/site/en/about-world-expos |
| Demographic power (capacity) | Working age population | The share of the working age population in each country | The data are sourced from OECD (2024), Working Age Population (indicator), doi: 10.1787/d339918b-en. Data for 2023 are based on 2022 figures. |
| Tertiary school enrollment | The ratio of total enrollment, regardless of age, to the population of the age group that officially corresponds to the level of tertiary education. | https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators/Series/SE.TER.ENRR# The gross enrollment ratio for tertiary education is calculated by dividing the number of students enrolled in tertiary education, regardless of age, by the population of the age group that officially corresponds to the tertiary level, and multiplying the result by 100. Missing data for 2012 have been filled using 2013 figures. | |
| Weighted Conflict Index | "The specific weights are variable. As of October 2007, the values entered were: Assassinations (25), Strikes (20), Guerrilla Warfare (100), Government Crises (20), Purges (20), Riots (25), Revolutions (150), and Anti-Government Demonstrations (10). Multiply the value for each variable times the specific weights; multiply that sum of products by 100 and divide the result by 8." | Refer to https://www.cntsdata.com/ https://www.cntsdata.com/_files/ugd/12dd44_8488933810904895a9862da7415397ee.pdf Please refer to Banks, Arthur S., Wilson, Kenneth A. 2023. Cross-National Time-Series Data (CNTS). Databanks International. Jerusalem, Israel; https://www.cntsdata.com/ for the details of the variable. For the EU, the average of EU countries was calculated and coded. Russia's 1991 data have been filled using 1992 data. | |
| Demographic power (leadership & influence) | Net migration | To eliminate negative values, the data for each country were adjusted by adding the absolute value of that country's minimum value for the given year. | Net migration refers to net international migration of each country. Data were collected from UN data. https://data.un.org/Data.aspx?d=PopDiv&f=variableID%3A85 |
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