Competitiveness of nations: review of the metric used by the World Economic Forum

Abstract

The competitiveness of nations is a relevant matter to decision makers when it comes to choose the country which may yield better results on investment. In this trend, this study seeks to analyze the metrics of competitiveness of countries using multivariate statistical concepts in order to simplify and avoid mixed results on the subject. With such a purpose, we used the databases published by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in 2010, which uses twelve pillars to establish the competitive position of 133 countries. It was found that the metric used by the WEF is redundant since it relies on pillars that represent the same construct. It was found that Technology Readiness explains the country’s competitiveness in 86.5% and that the combination of Macroeconomic Stability, Quality of Higher Education and Business Sophistication rises this percentage to 95.7%.