International Reports and Indices

• Option (a) is correct. The World Economic Outlook is the International Monetary Fund's flagship survey of the global economy, published twice a year in April and October with interim updates in January and July, containing the Fund's growth projections for the world and for individual member countries together with analytical chapters. It is one of a family of Fund publications that includes the Global Financial Stability Report and the Fiscal Monitor, and the three together cover the real economy, the financial system and the public finances.
• Option (b) is incorrect: the United Nations Development Programme publishes the Human Development Report, which carries the Human Development Index.
• Option (c) is incorrect: the World Economic Forum, a private foundation based in Geneva best known for the Davos meeting, publishes the Global Competitiveness Report, the Global Risks Report and the Global Gender Gap Report, and its similarity of name to the publication is exactly the trap.
• Option (d) is incorrect: the World Bank publishes the World Development Report and Global Economic Prospects, the latter being the closest competitor in subject matter and the one worth pairing with the World Economic Outlook in memory as the Bank's counterpart to the Fund's.

• Option (d) is correct. Global Economic Prospects is a World Bank flagship publication, issued twice a year in January and June, carrying growth forecasts for the world economy and for developing regions.
• Option (a) is wrong: the Asian Development Bank publishes the Asian Development Outlook.
• Option (b) is wrong: the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development publishes the Transition Report.
• Option (c) is wrong: the Federal Reserve publishes the Beige Book and the Monetary Policy Report and does not forecast the global economy in this form. The near neighbour the candidate must not confuse this with is the International Monetary Fund's World Economic Outlook, which is not among the options. The governing distinction within the Bretton Woods pair is that the Fund watches macroeconomic stability while the Bank watches development and growth prospects.

All three are indicators. From the 2015 edition onward the International Food Policy Research Institute computed the Global Hunger Index from four component indicators: the proportion of undernourished in the population, child wasting, child stunting and under-five mortality.

• Statement 1, undernourishment, is the calorie-deficiency measure drawn from FAO data and is the oldest component, carrying half the weight of the index.
• Statement 2, child stunting, is height-for-age deficiency and measures chronic undernutrition.
• Statement 3, child mortality, is the under-five mortality rate and captures the lethal consequences of undernutrition. Since none of the three can be excluded, the answer is (c).
• Options (a), (b) and (d) each require rejecting at least one genuine component. The elimination route is that a candidate who knows child mortality is a component can discard (a) and (b) at once, leaving (c) against (d), which turns only on whether stunting is included; since the index is explicitly built on both stunting and wasting, (c) follows.

The Ease of Doing Business Index was published by the World Bank in its annual Doing Business report, which scored economies on indicators such as starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and resolving insolvency. Hence (c).

• Option (a) is wrong: the OECD publishes a large body of comparative economic work but not this index.
• Option (b) is the strongest distractor, since the World Economic Forum publishes the Global Competitiveness Index, which is a superficially similar country ranking on business environment; the discriminator is that the Doing Business methodology measured regulatory procedures against a standardised hypothetical firm in the largest business city, whereas the Global Competitiveness Index rested substantially on an executive opinion survey.
• Option (d) is wrong: the WTO administers trade agreements and does not rank domestic regulatory environments. The item is easy because the ranking was a standing item of Indian economic news throughout the period.

The Global Financial Stability Report is published twice a year by the International Monetary Fund, alongside the World Economic Outlook and the Fiscal Monitor, and assesses risks to the global financial system arising from market and credit conditions, leverage, capital flows and the health of banking and non-bank sectors. It was instituted in 2002, replacing earlier market surveillance publications, and its salience increased greatly after the global financial crisis. Hence (b).

• Option (a) is wrong: the European Central Bank publishes its own Financial Stability Review, which is regional and is the most plausible distractor by title.
• Option (c) is wrong: the IBRD is the lending arm of the World Bank Group, whose flagship publications are the World Development Report and the Global Economic Prospects.
• Option (d) is wrong: the OECD publishes the Economic Outlook and a large body of comparative policy work but not this report. The organising principle worth teaching is the division of labour among the Bretton Woods institutions: the Fund monitors macroeconomic and financial stability, the Bank finances development, so a report on the stability of the global financial system belongs to the Fund by mandate.

• Option (a) is correct. The Global Gender Gap Index has been published annually by the World Economic Forum since 2006, measuring gender based gaps across four subindexes, economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment.
• Option (b) is wrong because the UN Human Rights Council is a charter based intergovernmental body conducting periodic reviews and mandating special procedures; it publishes no composite index.
• Option (c) is wrong although it is the most tempting distractor, UN Women being the UN entity for gender equality; its flagship output is the Progress of the World's Women report, not a ranked gender gap index.
• Option (d) is wrong because the World Health Organization's outputs are health statistics and the World Health Report. Governing principle for this whole family of items: match the index to its issuing body, and note that the World Economic Forum also issues the Global Competitiveness Report, the Global Risks Report and the Energy Transition Index.

• Option (d) is correct. The Rule of Law Index is published annually by the World Justice Project, an independent non profit organisation, and scores countries on eight factors including constraints on government powers, absence of corruption, open government, fundamental rights, order and security, regulatory enforcement, civil justice and criminal justice, using household and expert surveys rather than official statistics.
• Option (a) is wrong: Amnesty International produces country reports and campaigns on specific human rights violations and publishes no such composite index.
• Option (b) is wrong on institutional character rather than on subject matter, and this is the most instructive elimination in the question: the International Court of Justice is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, deciding contentious cases between States and giving advisory opinions, and a court does not rank the countries appearing before it.
• Option (c) is wrong on two counts, since the correct title is the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and that Office issues thematic and country reports and services the treaty bodies rather than publishing an index of this kind. Governing principle: composite governance indices are overwhelmingly the work of private research bodies and think tanks rather than of intergovernmental organs, since the latter cannot easily rank their own members.

Hence (d).