The United States is holding its own in first place. For the past 26
years, IMD, an international business school in Lausanne, Switzerland,
has issued a list of the countries it says are the world’s most
competitive.
\The U.S. had been in the No. 1 slot for more than a dozen years until the great recession knocked it from the top rung, in 2010. Though it regained the No. 1 slot in 2011, the hangover from the recession nudged it out of the top spot again in 2012. Once American financial markets recovered and business efficiency and profitability revived, it regained its dominant position last year. It’s in the No. 1 slot again this year.
IMD ranks 60 countries across the world, measuring a staggering 338 criteria in four broad categories—economic performance, government efficiency, business efficiency and infrastructure. For one third of the ranking, IMD uses a survey of more than 4,300 international executives.
For the rest, it relies on hard statistical data from institutions like the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which keep track of measures like direct investment, budget surpluses, revenues from tourism, and unemployment.
IMD also takes advantage of 55 “partner institutes” around the world, like Ireland’s development agency IDA Ireland, the Federation of German Industries, and the Mitsubishi Research Institute in Japan, who help gather statistics from national sources and distribute the executive surveys, which ran from January through March of this year. (For more on IMD’s methodology, click here.)
Read more: The World's Most Competitive Countries
\The U.S. had been in the No. 1 slot for more than a dozen years until the great recession knocked it from the top rung, in 2010. Though it regained the No. 1 slot in 2011, the hangover from the recession nudged it out of the top spot again in 2012. Once American financial markets recovered and business efficiency and profitability revived, it regained its dominant position last year. It’s in the No. 1 slot again this year.
IMD ranks 60 countries across the world, measuring a staggering 338 criteria in four broad categories—economic performance, government efficiency, business efficiency and infrastructure. For one third of the ranking, IMD uses a survey of more than 4,300 international executives.
For the rest, it relies on hard statistical data from institutions like the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which keep track of measures like direct investment, budget surpluses, revenues from tourism, and unemployment.
IMD also takes advantage of 55 “partner institutes” around the world, like Ireland’s development agency IDA Ireland, the Federation of German Industries, and the Mitsubishi Research Institute in Japan, who help gather statistics from national sources and distribute the executive surveys, which ran from January through March of this year. (For more on IMD’s methodology, click here.)
Read more: The World's Most Competitive Countries
