The study also found that economies in Africa implemented more positive reforms in the past year than in any previous year on record.
On Wednesday, it said like-for-like sales, which strip out the impact of sales from shops opened or closed in the past year, fell 3.5% in the past 14 weeks compared with a year earlier.
So how should one interpret the plunge in the past year in all three series of leading indicators?
's shares have enjoyed a 41% run in the past year in large part because of the glow surrounding MySpace.
The game also was the most-watched sporting event in the past year in Puerto Rico, with the final moments getting a 74 share.
There have been more than 20 restaurant openings in the past year in Atlantic City, ranging from traditional seafood to Asian fusion to upmarket steakhouses to outposts of casual chains from New York and Philadelphia.
Its shares have fallen by 90% in the past decade and by 40% in the past year alone.
One result: more cool eateries have opened in the past year than in the previous two combined.
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Peace Now, an Israeli group that monitors settlement building, says that 493 new housing units have gone up east of the planned barrier in the past year, in outposts and older settlements.
In the past year music activists in particular have proven adept at rallying public opinion.
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Almost all of her outfits in the past year have paled in comparison.
"We had to be more innovative and crafty, " says Pierce, who has looked at 25 deals in the past year, often in small cities where the cost of living and employee turnover are low.
The government can't do much about oil imports without fuel, the economy would grind to a halt so in the past year it has tried to rein in gold demand, raising the import duty three times in a year to its current level of 6 percent.
Several accidents have happened in the past year involving Marine training in Southern California.
But its motives for issuing increasingly menacing statements in the past year against Christians living in the nation's mostly Muslim north remain unclear.
In the past year, violent clashes in Port Said, a coastal province along the Suez Canal, have highlighted the longstanding resentment residents there feel toward Cairo.
Mass, peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations have swept the Arab world in the past year, not least in Yemen, where they eventually forced President Ali Abdullah Saleh to hand over power to his deputy in November.
In the past year there were 4, 357 reported shoplifting incidents in Cambridgeshire - a slight rise on the year before when there were 4, 319.
The fund has gained 37.88% in the past year and also includes holdings in cattle and lean hog futures.
She said: "In the past year we have had vacancies in science and English where we received no Manx applications whatsoever".
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That figure is up five percentage points in the past year, reflecting the rebound in stock prices and employees' preferences, it adds.
Just 13 panda cubs were born in the past year, down from 17 in 2007 and a record of 30 in 2006.
In the meantime Beijing has talked at various points in the past year or so about stepping in to help Greece, Portugal and Italy.
Local gangsters are reckoned to have carried out more than 50 murders in the past year, some of them in daylight in Sofia's streets.
In the past year her school has invested in two Centers of Excellence, one focusing on leadership for social impact, the other on ideas and the economy.
The Chinese market - where sales of Jaguar Land Rover's vehicles have risen 80% in the past year - has been rising in importance to the company.
Nottinghamshire's Swann, 31, has taken 99 wickets in 45 games for England in the past year, and also starred in the Ashes and ICC World Twenty20 triumphs.
Evening that out would spell a large profit spike, so LinkedIn in the past year has opened sales offices in Germany, Japan, Brazil, India, Spain and Hong Kong.
Shares of SanDisk have been ablaze in the past year, gaining 125% in value as the maker of NAND-based flash memory chips basks in the sweet spot of semiconductors for mobile electronics.
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But overall the mood among millions of Egyptians who have patiently queued again and again in the past year to have a say in their future is one of weary disgust with the whole messy business.
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