Countries with higher per‑person investment also tend to export more goods per person, even after adjusting for size and overall wealth.
Comparing Merchandise exports (current US$), per capita with Gross fixed capital formation (current US$), per capita across 166 countries, 2025–2025.
- Rank correlation
- +0.87
- Holding size constant
- +0.79
- Countries compared
- 166
- Period
- 2025–2025
What might link these
Greater gross fixed capital formation expands productive infrastructure and factories, enabling firms to produce more for export markets. In turn, export revenues can finance additional investment, creating a reinforcing cycle. A careful reader should note that factors such as institutional quality, technological advancement, or trade openness may drive both variables.
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 could be misleading if an unmeasured confounder like the quality of governance or trade policy influences both investment and export performance.
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.