World Competitiveness Ranking

Over the past two decades, the methodology used to assess the competitiveness of countries has been fine-tuned to take into account the evolution of the global environment and new research. In this way, the WCY keeps pace with structural changes in national environments and the rapidly changing technological revolution. We make these changes gradually so that we can preserve the comparability of results from year to year and highlight the evolution of an economy’s performance relative to the competitiveness of others.

Based on analysis made by leading scholars and on our own research, all criteria is grouped into sub-factors. Each sub-factor does not necessarily include the same number of criteria (for example, it takes more criteria to assess Education than to evaluate Prices). Sub-factors, irrespective of the number of criteria they contain, have the same weight in the overall consolidation of results.

In the case of the World Competitiveness Ranking, for example, the weight of each sub-factor is 5% (20 x 5 = 100). This allows us to “lock” the weight of the sub-factors regardless of the number of criteria they include. We believe that this approach improves the reliability of the results and helps ensure a high degree of compatibility with past results. Statistics are sometimes prone to errors or omission, locking the weights of sub-factors has the same function as building “fire barriers”; it prevents problems from spreading in a disproportionate way.

The WCY uses different types of data to measure quantifiable and qualitative issues separately. Statistical indicators are acquired from international, national and regional organizations, private institutions and our Partner Institutes. These statistics are referred to in the WCY as hard data. The hard data represent a weight of two-thirds in the overall rankings.

Additional criteria are drawn from our annual Executive Opinion Survey and are referred to in the WCY as survey data. The survey questions are included in the Yearbook as individual criteria and are also used to calculate the overall rankings, representing a weight of one-third.

Our Executive Opinion Survey complements the statistics we use from international, national and regional sources. While the hard data show how competitiveness is measured over a specific period of time, the survey data measures competitiveness as it is perceived by market participants.

The survey is designed to quantify issues that are not easily measured, for example: management practices, corruption, adaptive attitudes and the agility of companies. The survey responses reflect present and future perceptions of competitiveness by business executives who are dealing with international business situations. Their responses are more recent and closer to reality since there is no time lag with the year under consideration, which is often a problem with hard data, which show a “picture of the past.”

The Executive Opinion Survey is sent to midand upper-level managers in all the economies studied. The sample of respondents is representative of the entire economy, covering a cross-section of the business community in all economic sectors. In order to be statistically representative, we select a sample size that is proportional to the GDP breakdown of economic sectors of the economy.

The survey respondents are nationals or expatriates, in domestic or international enterprises who have resided at least a year in the economy under consideration. They are asked to evaluate the present and future competitiveness conditions of the economy in which they work, drawing from their domestic and international experience.

The online survey takes place from end of February to beginning of May. All responses are treated as confidential. In 2022, we received 6,031 responses from the 63 economies worldwide. The respondents assess the competitiveness issues by answering the questions on a scale of 1 to 6. The average value for each economy is then calculated and converted into a 0 to 1.