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Archived Articles
Simeon Mitropolitski is a Canadian analyst, of Bulgarian origin, and a former syndicated columnist with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA). He is the author of several hundred articles dealing with hot political and economic topics, both national and international.
He was part of the first group of Bulgarian intellectuals and students that began the opposition movement that finally put an end to the communist regime in this country in 1989, and in 1996-1997 participated in international observation teams during the elections in several Balkan countries - Romania, Albania and Bulgaria.
In 2002 Simeon and his family moved from Bulgaria to Canada where they live now in Montreal, province of Quebec. Simeon is a Master of Political Science from McGill University and a B.A. of Political Science and History.
Global Real Estate Project
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How We See Us Vs. How They See UsResults of a very interesting survey have recently been published by the nation brand expert Simon Anholt in cooperation with the Seattle-based firm GMI (Global Market Insite, Inc.). These results are named Anholt-GMI Nation Brands Index (NBI) and rank the brand name appeal of some 25 countries from different continents as they are perceived by 10,000 consumers from 10 different countries. The brand name appeal is a complex index and it's measured following several criteria like tourism, investment and immigration opportunities, quality of products, culture, people's hospitality and even the governments' abilities to make responsible decisions in their foreign policy. Such index may be important while doing educated guesses why some people prefer moving to one country instead of another. There may be several suggestions to the authors of this index in order to improve it without reducing its high value. The general idea of making a complex index of countries' perceptions around the globe as brand names is good, but do all these factors like culture or investment opportunities have equal weight? Researchers with big enough budget to make such large polls should consider the weight of any of these factors as perceived by the respondents and make some necessary changes in one of their next reports. This index is brand new so such improvements may hopefully be under way. There is a clear trend to increase the number of countries involved in the survey from the previous survey; but 25 is still clearly not enough to have a more general world picture. Perhaps I'm wrong but it seems to me that the gap between the first country Australia and that put under No.10, New Zealand, isn't as significant as the gap between those put under No. 11 and 20, namely the United States and South Korea, although technically speaking the first impression suggests that the later gap is as large as the former. By increasing the number of countries included in the list this misunderstanding may be avoided. Another misunderstanding involves some countries that, at least in the minds of some persons, go in pair with other countries that aren't included in the poll. By just looking at this rank list many Greeks will feel insulted by the lack of their country within the first 25 countries especially with the presence of Turkey. Hungarians can also feel betrayed by their country's absence alongside Poland and the Czech Republic. Another problem may arise from the fact that the respondents with some exceptions are from some of the countries that are included in the ranking. Does this influence the whole process of assessment? Why the residents of Canada and France are considered to be better prepared and trustworthy to make assessments than those of Poland and Brazil? In general though the new index is a good starting point for many additional analyses. I'd like to congratulate the authors and I'm looking forward to see new surveys that will take under account some of the issues raised above.
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