Countries with higher per‑person investment also tend to export more commercial services per person.
Comparing Commercial service exports (current US$), per capita with Gross capital formation (constant 2015 US$), per capita across 149 countries, 2018–2025.
- Rank correlation
- +0.87
- Holding size constant
- +0.81
- Countries compared
- 149
- Period
- 2018–2025
What might link these
Greater domestic capital formation can boost productivity and the capacity to produce tradable services, while a strong service export sector may encourage further investment in related infrastructure. A careful reader should note that both indicators rise with a country’s overall income level, which remains a plausible confounder despite controls for total GDP and population.
Why this is not proof of anything
This is a correlation across countries, not an experiment. It cannot show that either indicator causes the other, and both may simply follow a third thing. The observed link may largely reflect omitted variables such as average income or institutional quality that drive both investment and service exports.
The second figure above repeats the measurement with national population and income held constant. It is the more conservative number: a relationship that largely disappears there was mostly telling you that larger, richer countries have more of most things.
How this was measured
Both indicators were ranked across every country reporting each, and the two rankings compared — ranks rather than raw values, because a handful of very large countries can otherwise manufacture a relationship on their own. The calculation is arithmetic over figures already published on this site; the commentary above is drafted from the two indicator names and the resulting coefficients.