If you’re planning on looking for work or starting a new business abroad any time soon, you may be interested to know that Switzerland topped the WEF global competitiveness rankings as the most competitive economy in the world.
The recently released World Economic Forum Gobal Competitive Report 2013-2014 showed Switzerland, Singapore and Finland dominating the list of 148 countries studied by the WEF for the second year in a row.
The WEF bases its findings on what it calls the 12 pillars of competitiveness, which include business drivers like competitiveness of institutions, infrastructure, macroeconomic environment, higher education and other factors. The pillars are organized under three major areas: Basic Requirements, Efficiency Enhancers and Innovation and Sophistication Factors. The report also factors in an annual survey done with business leaders in each country that assesses the government’s efficiency and transparency.
Switzerland was among the best in the world for both business sophistication and innovation and a top country for local supplier quality, the amount businesses spend on research and development and university-industry research and development collaboration, not surprising because Switzerland is home to some of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world.
Germany ranked fourth this year, followed by the United States, Sweden, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Japan and the United Kingdom. Germany, the United States, Hong Kong and Japan all moved up in the rankings while Sweden, the Netherlands and the U.K. all slipped a ranking or two. Economic powerhouse China - just behind the United States in global economic output - remained in twenty-ninth place.
Mostly African nations filled the bottom 10 rankings: Chad, Guinea, Burundi, Yemen, Sierra Leone, Haiti, Angola, Mauritania, Burkina Faso and Myanmar.
Although the WEF said gross domestic product (GDP) is in itself not a measure of competitiveness, the least competitive countries also have the lowest GDP per capita because the same factors that prevent countries from competing for new business are often the same factors that limit productivity and output.