The study's author took gross-domestic-product data since 1980 for 210 nations and averaged those numbers, in each country, across all urban centers with one million or more people as of 2009. Each nation also got a figure for rural agricultural production, which was assigned a geographic location. By using these weighted figures, he identified a spot within the Earth as a figurative center of economic activity (much as a literal center of gravity is the point where the total weight of a body may be said to be concentrated). Then this point was projected onto Earth's surface.
In 1980 economic gravity was centered in the Atlantic Ocean, 900 miles west of Morocco. By 2008, the center had moved nearly 3,000 miles to a spot south of Izmir, Turkey. By 2050, the study projects, the center will be in rural China, 400 miles east of Katmandu.
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