CATALONIA -- A report from Credit Suisse says that Catalonia would improve with independence and that Spain would worsen - VilaWeb
A report from Credit Suisse says that Catalonia would improve with independence and that Spain would worsen
The bank’s research institute publishes the study 'The success of small states’
An independent Catalonia would have a higher development index than
it has in Spain today and also higher than a Spanish state without
Catalonia. This is what a study made by the Credit Suisse research
institute has said, which has just been published with the title 'The success of small states'
(pdf). Taking the Human Development Index (HDI), the study makes a
ranking of the world states where this is highest and places an
independent Catalonia in twentieth place, ahead of the twenty-third
place now held by Spain with Catalonia and the twenty-sixth place that
the Spanish state would hold without Catalonia.
The
study also places an independent Scotland in twenty-third place, above
the position currently held by the United Kingdom, twenty-seventh, and
that which the United Kingdom would hold without Scotland (thirtieth).
The index used by the authors of the
study, the HDI, is a comparative measure of life expectancy, literacy,
education and level of life of a country. It is a standard measurement
that gauges well-being that was developed by an Indian economist and a
Pakistani in 1990 for the United Nations Development Program.
Unlike the Gross Domestic Product, this
indicator includes more factors, and not just ‘physical’, in
considering the development index of a country. 'If we add education,
healthcare and intangible infrastructures, we find that the small
countries come out proportionally very well', the report says. 'Small
countries hold more than half of the first thirty positions. Scotland
and Catalonia present higher indexes than the United Kingdom and Spain,
respectively.'
One of the concepts the study brings in
is that of ‘intangible infrastructure’, which includes five elements:
education, health, finance, the service for companies and technology,
and they consider: 'Our view is that if developing countries can achieve
high growth with investment in physical elements (infrastructures, for
instance), they need to cultivate intangible infrastructures to have a
high and sustained level of human development'.
They go on, 'Small countries hold seven
of the first ten places on the ranking of intangible infrastructures
and 60% of the first thirty. The results are interesting because they
suggest that small countries make good use of their resources and get a
positive return on their investments.'
To give an example, the authors compare
Scotland with Norway. 'If we compare some of Scotland’s economic,
social and political indicators, we will find that it has some
similarities with neighbouring countries such as Norway in terms of
size, education, healthcare indicators and oil production'. But they add
that it is difficult to compare specific cases. 'The magic potion for
the development of a small country,' they say, 'is that they should have
a sense of strategic planning and awareness of the impact of external
forces such as the markets, trade and immigration, and at the same time
the institutional skill to implement the policies in these areas.'
The success of small countries
The report starts by remembering
that since 1945 the number of member states of the United Nations has
increased from around fifty to 193, 'two-thirds of which can be
classified as "small" (with a population of under ten million).'
And that these small states have a
better situation in terms of education, health and intangible
infrastructures than the medium-sized; that small countries are more
open to international trade and have adapted better to globalisation
than the larger countries.
However, it also says that, 'In the
case of Europe, the old small countries such as Switzerland and Sweden
have got over the crisis in the Eurozone much better. In other words
that if small countries generally show more advantages, those that are
small and also old are in an even better situation as they have had time
to 'develop a legal and institutional framework'. And it is precisely
these small and old 'Nordic and Alpine' countries that are a model that
the new small states aim to follow, although not all of the elements
that have contributed to the success of the former can be fully
transferred to the newer.
