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The approach we pursue is to use the end-to-end measurements of the PingER project . This has been gathering end-to-end Internet performance measurements since 1995 and currently measures the end-to-end Internet performance of over 125 countries. The scatter plot below shows the correlation of PingER loss measurements made for the period Jan-Sep 2007 from SLAC to the world, with the GDP/capita (capita depicting the productivity of a country ) for 2006.
It is seen that there is a moderate to strong correlation R2 ~ 0.58. Similar correlations (R2 ~ 0.52) are seen when one compares PingER derived throughputs vs. GDP/capita. Stronger correlations are obtained with development indices that are more technology or Internet related. For example if we correlate the PingER performane measurements (jitter, loss throughput) with the GDP/capita and also with one of the more recent and extensive of the indices, namely the ITU's Digital Opportunity Index(DOI) then we get the following R2 values.
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The gross domestic product or GDP is a way of measuring the size of a region's economy. It is usually normalized by dividing by capita. It is often compared with the purchasing power parity (PPP) of the currency relative to the US$. The terminology for GDP is changing to Gross National Income GNI, see the World Bank's Data and Statistics web page. There are measures from the World Bank and the Central Intelligence Agency among others, we are using https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2004rank.html
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