Ever wonder where that statistic comes from when a newspaper article states that the United States infrastructure has dropped to 16th in the world? These statistics come out of the Global Competitiveness Report produced each year by the World Economic Forum. The World Economic Forum has recently published its Global Competitiveness Report for 2011-2012. In the July 20, 2011 blog "Why so much discussion about the debt ceiling?" there was a discussion of the report and the differences between pre-recession rankings in 2007 and the rankings in the 2010 report. The previous blog is located in the July entries. The complete 2011-2012 report can be viewed at:
Directly quoting from the 2011-2012 report, their assessment of the United is as follows:
"The United States continues the decline that began three years ago, falling one more position to 5th place. While many structural features continue to make its economy extremely productive, a number of escalating weaknesses have lowered the US ranking in recent years. US companies are highly sophisticated and innovative, supported by an excellent university system that collaborates admirably with the business sector in R&D. Combined with flexible labor markets and the scale opportunities afforded by the sheer size of its domestic economy—the largest in the world by far—these qualities continue to make the United States very competitive. On the other hand, there are some weaknesses in particular areas that have deepened since past assessments. The business community continues to be critical toward public and private institutions (39th).
In particular, its trust in politicians is not strong (50th), it remains concerned about the government’s ability to maintain arms-length relationships with the private sector (50th), and it considers that the government spends its resources relatively wastefully (66th). In comparison with last year, policy making is assessed as less transparent (50th) and regulation as more burdensome (58th). A lack of macroeconomic stability continues to be the United States’ greatest area of weakness (90th). Over the past decade, the country has been running
repeated fiscal deficits, leading to burgeoning levels of public indebtedness that are likely to weigh heavily on the country’s future growth. On a more positive note, after having declined for two years in a row, measures of financial market development are showing a hesitant recovery, improving from 31st last year to 22nd overall this year in that pillar."
Changes between 2007(pre-recession), 2010, and 2011.
Overall Competitiveness 2007-1st 2010-4th 2011-5th
1. Trust in institutions 2007-25th 2010-40th 2011-39th
2. Infrastructure 2007-7th 2010-15th 2011-16th
3. Macroeconomics 2007-66th 2010-87th 2011-90th
4. Health and Primary Education 2007-34th 2010-42nd 2011 42nd
5. Higher Education and Training 2007-5th 2010-9th 2011-13th
6. Goods Market Efficiency 2007-8th 2010-26th 2011-24th
7. Labor Market efficiency 2007-1st 2010-4th 2011-4th
8. Financial Market Development 2007-9th 2010-31st 2011-22nd
9. Technological Readiness 2007-11th 2010-17th 2011-20th
10. Market Size 2007-1st 2010-1st 2011-1st
11. Business Sophistication 2007-4th 2010-8th 2011-10th
12. Technical Innovation 2007-1st 2010-1st 2011-5th
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