Where is the world's economic centre of gravity?

An interesting paper from Jean-Marie Grether and Nicole Mathys in Switzerland entitled Is the World’s Economic Center of Gravity Already in Asia? and dated August 2008 locates the world's current economic centre of gravity off the north coasts of Norway and Russia.

The bad news for New Zealand is that Auckland is the most distant major city (with more than one million inhabitants) in the world from the economic centre. The vaguely promising news for New Zealand is that the economic centre is slowly moving closer.

As for Iceland, even without its recent economic collapse, the centre has been moving away to its north east since the mid 1970s.