Recent media coverage in relation to the Ukraine invasion has ranged from “Only 11th biggest in the world", and "smaller than Italy", to 6th biggest, just behind Germany".
The reason for such great differences is that many GDP judgements are still made in nominal terms, with all countries measured in US Dollars. Others are made in Purchasing Power Parity International Dollars (PPP Int$'s).
How Big is Russian GDP?
Russia Ranked by GDP Measurement
This latter system, the preferred measure of organisations as diverse as the IMF and the CIA, takes account the price of local goods and services, and inflation rates, and raises the value of GDP in less developed countries compared with developed countries. Hence the uplift in Russian GDP from 11th to 6th place in the global pecking order, shown above.
World Economics goes a step further and uses PPP estimates, added to estimates of the Shadow or Informal economy, and estimates for outdated Base Years (if used) for measuring GDP. The World Economics GDP Data Quality Ratings also take account of use of outdated UN Guidance on GDP measurement, Corruption (Governments frequently bend GDP calculations to their advantage, and the Capacity of Statistics Systems to calculate GDP).
Using World Economics data, largely deriving from estimates of Russia's large Informal economy, Russia moves up the 2022 global GDP rankings to fifth place, behind China, the USA, India, and just a little behind Japan.
Had Russia walked into Ukraine without opposition, the combination of the two economies would have lifted Russia to 4th place in global GDP ranks.
All such GDP estimates are just that - estimates, and some way from the careful measures used in the physical sciences and engineering worlds. They are used nevertheless for many purposes, as they are the only data available to measure overall economic activity.
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