ARMENIA and Zimbabwe belong at opposite ends of any alphabetic roll call of nations. They also belong at opposite ends of the World Bank's pecking order of developing countries, which it has unveiled for the first time. Each year the bank gives countries between one and six marks for their efforts to do the sort of things of which it approves, such as curbing budget deficits, keeping tariffs low and even narrowing the gap between the sexes and looking after the environment. Armenia scored 4.3 overall; Zimbabwe 1.8.

Points mean prizes: the 16 indicators help decide who gets what from the pot of $33 billion the bank can disburse to its poorest members over three years. Until now, the bank had let on only which of five broad tiers countries fell into. Now everyone's score is on the bank's website for all to see.

Armenia tops the class largely because of its stunning macroeconomic record. Its GDP grew by 14% in 2005, whereas Zimbabwe's shrank by 6.5%. Armenia's inflation rate is lower than Japan's (it has done almost too well, you might say). Prices in Zimbabwe, where official statisticians track the debauching of the currency with admirable precision, rose by 1,193.5% in the year to May.

The bank's assessments draw on the judgment of staff IN SITU and in Washington, DC, guided by a detailed questionnaire. A country deserves four marks out of six for its trade policy, for example, if its average tariff is less than 16% and its customs houses run smoothly, marred only by the odd demand for "tea money" to speed things up. A country where women cannot easily request a divorce and where female genital mutilation is neither a crime nor uncommon would score just one for gender equality.

The indicators faithfully mirror "the evolution of the development paradigm", as the bank puts it. They provide a long checklist of things that matter, but no sense of the proper sequence of them, nor of trade-offs between them. To earn full marks for fiscal policy, for example, a country must show it can cut public spending in economic adversity without "jeopardising the quality and quantity of public goods". The sprawling range of concerns, from current-account deficits to teenage pregnancy, bespeaks broad-mindedness. But, in practice, countries that score well on one of the indicators tend to do well on most.

The bank deliberated at length before disclosing its ratings. Some outside advisers did worry that publishing the results might spook investors or tempt politicians to "abuse the ratings for political gain". But if an enterprising politician were to use a poor score to press for reform, the numbers might do as much good as the money that follows them.