This is the complete-reporting panel: economies observed on enough of every pillar to be compared on the same basis. Scores, CRITIC weights and ranks are all re-estimated within this panel, so a position here is relative to these economies alone. The five-bar glyph shows the shape of readiness, with the binding constraint in red — two economies can share a rank and need entirely different reforms.
Economies held out of the main ranking because at least one pillar falls below the reporting threshold. Their scores are shown on the full 183-economy basis and are not comparable with the main panel: under geometric aggregation a missing indicator is dropped rather than penalised, so a thin profile is scored on whatever it happens to report.
Rank movement between two waves. When a new year is appended this is where it shows up first — the comparison repopulates on its own, so the newest wave becomes the default endpoint.
CRITIC sets weights from each year's own dispersion and redundancy, so weights are an output of the data, not a fixed choice. Appending a wave re-estimates all of them. This view is the audit trail: if a ranking moves after new data lands, the cause is usually visible here.
Whether the five pillars measure distinct capacities or collapse onto a single development axis. Weak correlation between Institutions and the digital–economic–financial block is the empirical warrant for keeping them separate.
Coverage drives everything downstream: an economy observed on four indicators can post a high score because the geometric mean is taken over whatever is present. Use the coverage floor in the rail to reproduce the manuscript's restricted samples, and read the diagnostics here before trusting a thin row.
What this measures
The CBDC Readiness Index measures whether a country has the structural foundations to introduce a central bank digital currency safely and at scale. It does not measure whether a country intends to launch one, or how well any particular design would work.
Readiness is treated as a necessary but not sufficient condition. A well-prepared economy may hold back for reasons of monetary caution or because existing payment rails already work; a less prepared one may launch early under financial-inclusion or monetary-sovereignty pressure. The gap between readiness and launch behaviour is what the index is built to expose.
The five pillars
Each pillar is necessary; none is sufficient alone. Design choices such as remuneration rules or token-versus-account architecture are excluded by construction, as decisions taken once a country is structurally ready.
How a score is built
Within each year, every indicator is winsorised at the 1st and 99th percentiles, standardised on the median and median absolute deviation, inverted where it represents a cost, and rescaled to a 0–1 range. Weights are then set by CRITIC, which gives more weight to indicators that vary widely across countries and carry information the others do not. Indicators are combined into pillar scores, and pillars into the index, by weighted geometric mean.
The geometric mean is deliberate. It is non-compensatory: a weak pillar cannot be offset by strength elsewhere, because a country missing one foundation is not ready regardless of how advanced the others are. This is why the weakest pillar is highlighted in red throughout the site — it is the binding constraint on that country's readiness.
How to read a ranking
Positions at the very top and very bottom are stable across alternative methods. Positions in the middle are not: a difference of a few places there falls within the range that reasonable methodological choices would move it. Read the pillar profile rather than the rank. Two countries in adjacent positions frequently need entirely different reforms.
Data and limitations
Indicators are drawn from public sources including the World Bank, IMF, ITU and BIS. Coverage is uneven, and this matters: a missing indicator is dropped from the calculation rather than counted against a country, so a thinly reported economy is scored on whatever it happens to publish.
The main ranking is therefore limited to countries observed on at least half of every pillar. Those falling short are listed separately on the Partial data page with the specific shortfall named. Their scores are shown for reference and are not comparable with the main table.
The index does not measure public trust, political willingness, or the quality of any specific CBDC design, all of which require data this kind of cross-country measure cannot capture.
Source and citation
This site accompanies the paper Who Is Ready for CBDC? A Multi-Pillar Cross-Country Readiness Index and Toolkit for Policy Makers.
Replace the bracketed fields before publishing.
Reuse
Every table on this site can be downloaded as CSV from the sidebar, along with the full source panel. The data is free to reuse with attribution.
Reproducibility
Nothing here is precomputed. The index is rebuilt from the raw panel in your browser every time you change a control, using the same procedure described in the paper. Switching the weighting or aggregation method in the sidebar reruns the whole calculation, so the robustness checks reported in the paper can be reproduced directly.
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