My Ranking

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Instructions: use the Indicators page to select indicators and begin building your ranking.

When you're satifisfied, go to the My Ranking page to assign weights to each of the indicators and finish building your ranking.

How does it work?

MasterCard Worldwide Centers of Commerce Include this ranking in your ranking

Source: http://www.mastercard.com/us/company/en/insights/studies/2008/wcoc/index.html

The MasterCard Worldwide Centers of Commerce Index (2008) [PDF] offers insight into the economic components of 75 of the world’s leading global cities.

Recognizing how the diversity, scale, scope and reach of the economies of global cities far exceeds expectations based on their size, MasterCard offers a ranking offers a rankings of global cities meant to help companies leverage location advantages and local market conditions and workers find places where wages are highest.

The ranking evaluates 75 cities across seven dimensions consisting of 74 sub-indicators. These are:

  • Legal and political framework (country-level data, 10%): includes the presence of an effective democratic system, a long history of lawmaking and transparency in government.
  • Economic stability (country-level data, 10%): rooted in the development of effective economic management institutions (e.g. stable exchange rate, low inflation rate)
  • Ease of doing business (20%): includes assessments on investor protection, quality of banking system, and the level of enforcement of contracts.
  • Financial flow (22%): includes a study of the financial regulation at the city level, and the types of financial products traded.
  • Business center (12%): includes transport volumes of goods and passengers.
  • Knowledge creation and information flow (16%): includes the presence of universities, patent applications, broadband access, and the number of researchers.
  • Liveability (mix of city- and country-level data, weighted 10%): includes the quality of life, the provision of basic services and the personal freedom.

MasterCard relies on a panel of experts to attribute a different weighting to each dimension.

Main findings

London, New York and Tokyo top the overall index. There are 14 North American cities in the top 40 – ranking high when country-level data is used, while Europe has 10 cities ranking in the top 25. There are five Chinese, three Indian and one African city (Johannesburg) in the top 75.