California is overtaking Brazil as the world’s seventh-largest economy, bolstered by rising employment, home values and personal and corporate income, a year after the most-populous state surpassed Russia and Italy.

The Golden State, with an equivalent gross domestic product of $2.20 trillion in 2013, expanded last year by almost every measure, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Brazil’s gross domestic product, in contrast, declined 1 percent from $2.25 trillion in the first three quarters of 2014 as its export of raw materials fell.

[...]

“It’s the diversity of the California business environment, from movies to the Internet to agriculture -- the incredible array of businesses that make up the state,” Brown said yesterday in an interview at his office in Oakland, where he was mayor from 1999 to 2007. “Certainly getting our finances in line as a state is also helpful: the new investments in our schools; solid universities; investments in water and energy. All this gives security and keeps California very much in the forefront of investment, change, cultural adaptation and leadership.”