The World's Most Competitive Economies

Last week, the World Economic Forum released its annual study on the competitiveness of the global economy. One of the most important takeaways from the report was an index ranking assessing the microeconomic and macroeconomic foundations of national competitiveness. The World Economic Forum benchmarked the competitiveness of 141 economies through 103 indicators (on a scale from 0 to 100) organized into 12 themes to determine how close an economy is to the "frontier" of competitiveness.

Singapore overtook to the United States to become the world's most competitive economy in 2019, scoring 84.3 points out of 100 and doing particularly well across macroeconomic stability, infrastructure, innovation capability and its labor market. Even though the U.S. slipped into second place with 83.7 points, the report notes that it remains an "innovation powerhouse", ranking first on the business dynamism pillar, second on innovation capability and first for finding skilled workers. Vietnam was one of the top performers over the past year, jumping 10 places since last year to rank 67th. It has been one of the winners of the bitter trade war between Washington and Beijing, seeing its exports from the U.S. climb 36 percent in the first five months of 2019.