Economic Information

World competitiveness studies

Global Competitiveness Report

The World Economic Forum (WEF) releases an annual Global Competitiveness Report. The 2016-2017 issue is available here

. This year, the study covers a total of 138 economies.

The Global Competitiveness Report is based on the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI), “a highly comprehensive index, which captures the microeconomic and macroeonomic foundations of national competitiveness”. The GCI is composed of more than 114 indicator, which form 12 pillars: Institutions, Infrastructure, Macroeconomic Stability, Health and Primary Education, Higher Education and Training, Goods Market Efficiency, Labour Market Efficiency, Financial Market Sophistication, Technological Readiness, Market Size, Business Sophistication and Innovation.

Competitiveness is defined as “the set of institutions, policies, and factors that determine the level of productivity of a country”.

Here are the world's top 10 most competitive economies from the 2016-2017 report:

1. Switzerland (1)
2. Singapore (2)
3. United States (3)
4. Netherlands (5)
5. Germany (4)
6. Sweden (9)
7. United Kingdom (10)
8. Japan (6)
9. Hong Kong SAR (7)
10. Finland (8)

(): Rank in 2015-2016 report

This ranking confirms that both Switzerland's and Japan's economies are among the most competitive in the world, highlighting extremely favorable institutional contexts.

Switzerland remains the world's most competitive economy. The country achieves the highest GCI score since the introduction of the current methodology (2007). It took over the United States in 2009-2010 ranking.
The report highlights that Switzerland tops four of the eleven GCI pillars: "labor market efficiency, business sophistication, innovation and technological readiness". The country is also in the top ten of six of the other pillars.

Japan’s economy (8th) has lost two places due to the good performance of Sweden and UK. Japan is still "undermined by the macroeconomic situation" despite the recent improvement and the "labor market lacks of dynamism".
The report underlines "excellent infrastructure (5th) and highly sophisticated firms (2nd)". R&D and availability of scientists and engineers is among the best in the world.

World Competitiveness Yearbook

The International Institute for Management Development (IMD) releases an annual World Competitiveness Yearbook

.

According to the IMD, "the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook (WCY) is the world's most renowned and comprehensive annual report on the competitiveness of nations, ranking and analyzing how a nation's environment creates and sustains the competitiveness of enterprises".

Ranking 63 economies in 2017, the World Competitiveness Yearbook is based on 340 criteria related to economic performance, government efficiency, business efficiency and infrastructure.

Here are the world's top 10 most competitive economies and Japan's economy in 2017 World Competitiveness Yearbook:
1. China Hong Kong (2)
2. Switzerland (2)
3. Singapore (4)
4. USA (3)
5. Netherlands (8)
6. Ireland (7)
7. Denmark (6)
8. Luxembourg (11)
9. Sweden (5)
10. UAE (15)

26. Japan (26)

(): Rank in 2016 World Competitiveness Yearbook.

According to this ranking, Switzerland is the second most competitive economy.
Japan is the twenty-sixth most competitive economy.