We’re No. 8. For the second year in a row, California was home to the world’s eighth-largest economy in 2006, according to statistics released Tuesday, the Sacramento Bee reports.

California as recently as 2002 was ranked fifth, a rating that was touted by state officials as a sign of the state’s vigor. Lately, though, the state has slipped in the rankings because of fluctuations in currency values and the rapid-fire growth of China.

But the state’s economy has been growing faster than the U.S. average. And California’s economy is still 60 percent larger than that of Texas, the second-largest in the nation.

“In terms of states, we’re still way ahead,” said Stephen Levy of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy in Palo Alto. Levy compiled the rankings from World Bank and U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis statistics.

The state’s gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic output, was measured at $1.73 trillion in 2006, just behind Italy but well ahead of Canada.

Howard Roth, chief economist at the state Department of Finance, said California’s world ranking has fallen in recent years because of China’s growth and the relative weakness of the dollar against other currencies, which had the effect of increasing the GDP of countries such as France and Italy.

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