A Cluster Analysis on Sustained Global Competitiveness for European Countries

Abstract

The Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) developed by Xavier Salai-Martín, in collaboration with the World Economic Forum, has been measuring the factors that drive the growth and prosperity since 2005. This paper focuses on grouping the European nations according to global competitiveness. It uses the hierarchical and K-means cluster with a particular focus to examine the grouping of countries from 2008 to 2017 and to reduce the complexity in examining the relationship between European countries. The drivers of competitiveness are grouped into 12 critical pillars, namely, institutions, macroeconomic environment, infrastructure, higher education and training, health and primary education, goods market efficiency, financial market development, labor market efficiency, technological readiness, market size, business sophistication, and innovation respectively. The mean score of Europe during the study period was 4.7 and 40% of the European countries were found to be above the average and have been consistently performing well ahead of the average on competitiveness. This study can be generalized to other nations as well as compared with other indexes for exhaustive research that can be useful for policymakers.

The Determinants and Effects of Competitiveness: The Role of Digitalization in the European Economies

“…Rusu and Roman [46] used the Global Competitiveness Index in the applied regression models, and the results show differences with regard to the impact of the economic factors on competitiveness, according to the stage (efficiency-driven, in transition between efficiency and innovation and innovation-driven) of development of Central and Eastern European countries. Kolluru and Suresh [47], focusing on the global competitiveness index, presented the results of clustering the European countries; namely, cluster 1 (Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, UK, Finland) and cluster 2 (Norway, Denmark, Austria, Luxemburg, Belgium, France, Ireland) are the more resilient and less vulnerable economies.…”

“…The largest gap is in the product markets, labor markets, financial systems, business dynamism and innovation capability pillars across the 12 pillars of the Global Competitiveness Index. According to the view of the IMD World Competitiveness Ranking (2020), there are also big differences among the development levels of economies of Denmark (2), the Netherlands (4), Sweden (6), Ireland (12), Hungary (47), Bulgaria (48), Greece (49), Romania (51), Slovakia (57) and Croatia (60). These differences appeared in factors ranking as the economic performance, government efficiency, business efficiency and infrastructure.…”

Sustainability Assessment of Energy Storage Technologies Based on Commercialization Viability: MCDM Model

“…Roy [16] presented a systematic and comprehensive approach to MCDM, including an overview of different MCDM methods, their applications, and their limitations. Zavadskas et al [17] provided an overview of different MCDM methods and their applications in economics [18,19] and included a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of each technique. MCDM is a complex and diverse field that requires careful consideration of multiple criteria and objectives.…”