When someone asks what are the 10 richest countries in the world by 2015 GDP in a conversation, you can be sure no one will have an answer for that. When it comes to making a top 10 countdown to the richest man on Earth, we all know a few names on the list and some others ring a bell, but that’s not the case referring to the richest countries in the world.
We can mention two main methods for defining the richest countries in the world. The most commonly accepted method for such definition is to take into account the GDP data per capita, which is nothing more that how rich the average citizen of a country is, and what this person is able to buy with their annual income. The other method takes into account the countries with the largest economies, measured by total gross domestic product (GDP), and this is the method on which we focus our study.
According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Gross Domestic Product is defined as “an aggregate measure of production equal to the sum of the gross values added of all resident, institutional units engaged in production (plus any taxes, and minus any subsidies, on products not included in the value of their outputs)”.
For this article in particular, we used the total gross domestic product of each country in the world to list the top 10 richest countries in the world by GDP. Most of the countries listed below have always been on the list, but for others, this would be a first appearance. With the world’s economics shifting as rapidly as the new iPhone comes out for sale, we can only assume these countries will remain on the list for a few years, or even months. Such is the case of the United States of America, which has been the number one richest country in the world for several years, but has dropped to the second spot according to the International Monetary Fund on April 2015.
This phenomenon is being carefully followed by economists worldwide, and they predict that China will be the world’s largest economy in the years to come, and that India -currently holding the third spot over Japan- will continue to grow steadily, and might even top the United States in the future. Countries like China and India have had a GDP growth of over 80% since the year 2008, and the projections for these two countries are enormous if they continue to grow at this pace. With all that taken into account, let’s see which are the 10 richest countries in the world by 2015 GDP:
10. France: $2.634 trillion
Formerly one of the top five richest countries in the world, France has been a bit of a downer in the past few years. Actually, in modern day economy, we have seen small signs of growth in european countries such as Spain and Germany among others, whilst France shows no signs of recovery.
