My comment:
(a) The KEI is undated but released yesterday or earlier today.
(b) KAM stands for
Knowledge Assessment Methodology http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/ ... S/KFDLP/EXTUNIKAM/0,,menuPK:1414738~pagePK:64168427~piPK:64168435~theSitePK:1414721,00.html
, which is the parent program for KEI.
(c) Table 1 lists:
Sweden (1),Germany (8), Ireland (11), US (12), Taiwan, China (13), UK (14), Hong Kong, China (18), Japan (22), Singapore (23), France (24), Korea, Rep (29), Russian Federation (55), China (84), India (110).
(d) Quotation from web page 4 of the KEI:
"The United States KEI position has suffered from a weakening in all 4 pillar indices. Its KEI has fallen from 1st place in 1995 to 4th in 2000 to 12th position in the current 2012 rankings. It remains relatively strong in the innovation pillar (ranked 6th), buttressed by an exceptionally large number of USPTO [United States Patent and Trademark Office] patents granted (normalized score of 9.93), science & technical journal articles published (normalized score of 9.1), and high levels of royalty payments and receipts (normalized score of 9.36). However, it currently ranks below the top 10 in all other pillars. Its relatively slower advancement on all 3 ICT indicators has led to the US falling from number 1 in ICT in 1995 to number 18 currently. For example, although its number of telephones per thousand people increased from 1,070 in 2000 to 1,470 in the most recent year, other countries improved even faster. Its normalized score, therefore, actually fell from 8.76 to 6.76. Similarly, its EIR pillar has declined, mainly because of the weakening of its tariff and nontariff barriers indictor."
ICT represents "Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) Infrastructure"--one of the four pillars.
(e) KEI's web page 6 states, "Taiwan made gains in the innovation pillar primarily because of the astonishingly high number of patents–323 per million people, ranking number 1 among all 146 economies."