But such a strategy may overlook the burgeoning influence of multinational companies on the national indexes.

The measures use the most prominent national index for each country.

The national index is normalized to have a value of 100 in the first quarter of 2000.

The national index attained its all-time high of 189.93 in 2006 Q2.

And no matter how low the national index dropped, a man's personal individual business was unaffected.

It is still not calculated in the national index, although its falling price might dampen the inflation rate.

Its national index was down 2 basis points from the previous week.

For all of 1987 the national index rose 4.4 percent.

In 1984, Connecticut's index was 61.8, nearly 20 points higher than the national index, the institute reported.

Arkansas has always ranked at or near the bottom in virtually all the national indexes of economic well-being.