Luxembourg's competitiveness boosted in latest WEF report

Luxembourg is ranked the 19th most competitive economy of the world (among 144 countries analysed).

The World Economic Forum has just published the 2014-2015 edition of its comparative study of the competitiveness of countries around the world, the "Global Competitiveness Report”. This evaluates the potential for the world’s economies to reach sustained growth over the medium to long term. Competitiveness is defined in this study as the “the set of institutions, policies, and factors that determine the level of productivity of a country.”

The study measures the level of competitiveness of 144 countries across the world on the basis of around 100 indicators, ranked on a scale from 1 (the least competitive) to 7 (the most competitive). These indicators are organised into three key growth and competitiveness “pillars”: basic requirements in terms of competitiveness (featuring the sub-categories institutions, infrastructure, macroeconomic environment, health & primary education), efficiency enhancers (featuring the sub-categories higher education and professional training, goods market efficiency, labour market efficiency, financial market development, technological readiness, market size), and innovation and sophistication factors (featuring the subcategories related to the degree of business sophistication and innovation).

In the new 2014-2015 edition, the world is led by Switzerland (5.70), Singapore (5.65) and the United States (5.54). As for Luxembourg, the WEF classifies the country as economically mature (in other words with the highest level of innovation and sophistication) and with a score of 5.17 out of 7. This puts the country at 19th place in the world, up three places on last year’s report. Germany is ranked 5th (5.49), the Netherlands 8th (5.45), Belgium 18th (5.18) and France 23rd (5.08). The highest ranked EU country in this edition is Finland (4th with 5.50) with Luxembourg eighth out of the 28 member states.

Source: WEF (2014-2015)

A GCI adjusted for social and environmental sustainability was estimated for the first time in the 2014-2015 edition. This served to boost Luxembourg’s score, rising from 5.17 for the standard GCI to 5.85 for this sustainability-adjusted index.

Luxembourg’s ranking in the three competitiveness pillars was as follows:

• 7th for basic requirements for competitiveness. Within this, the country comes 6th for its institutions, 16th for infrastructure, 8th for the macroeconomic environment and 36th for health and primary education.
• 22nd for efficiency enhancers. Within this, the country is ranked 43rd for higher education and training, 5th for goods market efficiency, 16th for labour market efficiency, 14th for the financial market development, first for technological maturity and 96th for market size.
• 18th for innovation and sophistication factors. Within this, the country comes 21st for business sophistication and 16th for innovation.

Source: WEF (2014-2015)