The Economist

Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist.

Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist.

I'm Jason Palmer.

Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

In India, the bottom rung of the caste system is occupied by the Daleks, once called Untouchables,

who make up perhaps a quarter of the country.

Our correspondent says their exceptionally rich cuisine is woefully overlooked.

And we take a ride on the River Thames, with a bunch of other commuters.

The number of people moving around by river taxi is breaking Victorian era records,

and it's even becoming a slightly more environmentally sound way to get around.

First up, though.

I know what you're thinking, that overall the world economy did okay in 2025,

especially given all those tariff-driven recession fears.

You're thinking labor markets are pretty healthy, and stock market returns have been pretty good.

But you know that average picture hides a lot of variation,

and that some countries have had a far better 2025 than others.

If only there were a way, you lament, to rank which countries did best.

Well, fear not.

Our senior economics writer, Callum Williams, is here to help.

Our economy of the year ranking is composed of five different indicators. That's inflation,

inflation breadth, GDP growth, employment growth, and share price growth. And what we do is we look at each of those indicators for as many different rich countries as we can find.

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