The top 10 most competitive economies in the world, according to the World Economic Forum’s just-released 2007-2008 Global Competitiveness Report, are:
1. United States
2. Switzerland
3. Denmark
4. Sweden
5. Germany
6. Finland
7. Singapore
8. Japan
9. United Kingdom
10. Netherlands
Here’s Xavier Sala-i-Martin, Professor of Economics at Columbia University and Co-Editor of the Report, on its findings:
At Foreign Policy’s Passport blog, Adam Lewis has some notable highlights from the report, including what it tells us about the success of Hugo Chávez’s “half-baked socialist vision” and the work that Nicolas Sarkozy has to do in France.
The Financial Times has a video interview with Jennifer Blanke, a senior economist at the WEF, about the rankings. Like Lewis, she notes how well “the Nordics” did in the rankings, and says France and Germany suffered chiefly because of poor labor market competitiveness, or “stickiness,” as she puts it.
The United States’ “macroeconomic imbalances,” are the main factor that could endanger its top spot in the future, according to the report.