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Chart: Measuring Global Competitiveness

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competitiveness over time

Chart: Measuring Global Competitiveness

The Chart of the Week is a weekly Visual Capitalist feature on Fridays.

What makes an economy competitive at the global level, and why?

It’s a question that economists, investors, and politicians have been asking themselves for decades. And to help answer it, the World Economic Forum has created the Global Competitiveness Index, or GCI.

How can we measure competitiveness?

To figure out how countries compare on the world stage, the GCI is calculated based on 114 economic metrics ranging from the quality of infrastructure to the amount of government debt.

This wide variety of metrics is organized into a set of 12 pillars, as follows:

12 pillars of Measuring Global Competitiveness

Global Competitiveness by Country

Based on the latest edition of the report, Switzerland (5.81) is the most competitive country in the world, having held the leading position since 2010 after it outpaced the United States (5.70) in the wake of the financial crisis.

RankCountryCurrent Score (2016)Previous Score (2015)Change
1Switzerland5.815.760.05
2Singapore5.725.680.04
3United States5.705.610.09
4Netherlands5.575.500.07
5Germany5.575.530.04
6Sweden5.535.430.10
7United Kingdom5.495.430.06
8Japan5.485.470.01
9Hong Kong5.485.460.02
10Finland5.445.45-0.01
11Norway5.445.410.03
12Denmark5.355.330.02
13New Zealand5.315.250.06
14Taiwan5.285.280.00
15Canada5.275.31-0.04

Picturing Competitiveness

Global competitiveness is a multi-faceted metric, but our understanding of it becomes clearer when compared with more standard measures such as GDP per capita (PPP).

The interactive graphic below from Knoema plots GDP per capita against GCI between 2006-2015, showing how the relationship between competitiveness and wealth has changed over time for numerous countries.

It is clear that competitiveness and GDP are positively correlated. In other words, the ability to be structurally and organizationally competitive creates conditions that are ideal for economic growth.

Don’t Worry, Be Happy

Competitiveness and growth in economic output may be related, but the infrastructure needed to stay globally competitive may confer other benefits to competitive ability and quality of life that go beyond GDP.

The Happy Planet Index (HPI) measures the sustainable well-being of citizens in any given country, and is plotted here against GCI.

The correlation between these factors is still positive, but weaker.

Rwanda, for example, is by statistical measure one of the world’s unhappiest nations (3.52 HPI); it is roughly equally competitive with the comparatively jubilant Costa Rican population (7.09 HPI), which also has a much higher GDP per capita.

On the other hand, a country can still be happy without being particularly competitive on a global basis. For example, Argentina (6.65 HPI) ranks in the bottom 50% of countries for global competitiveness (3.79 GCI).

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Markets

Will Tesla Lose Its Spot in the Magnificent Seven?

We visualize the recent performance of the Magnificent Seven stocks, uncovering a clear divergence between the group’s top and bottom names.

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Will Tesla Lose Its Spot in the Magnificent Seven?

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

In this graphic, we visualize the year-to-date (YTD) performance of the “Magnificent Seven”, a leading group of U.S. tech stocks that gained prominence in 2023 as the replacement of FAANG stocks.

All figures are as of March 12, 2024, and are listed in the table below.

RankCompanyYTD Change (%)
1Nvidia90.8
2Meta44.3
3Amazon16.9
4Microsoft12
5Google0.2
6Apple-6.7
7Tesla-28.5

From these numbers, we can see a clear divergence in performance across the group.

Nvidia and Meta Lead

Nvidia is the main hero of this show, setting new all-time highs seemingly every week. The chipmaker is currently the world’s third most valuable company, with a valuation of around $2.2 trillion. This puts it very close to Apple, which is currently valued at $2.7 trillion.

The second best performer of the Magnificent Seven has been Meta, which recently re-entered the trillion dollar club after falling out of favor in 2022. The company saw a massive one-day gain of $197 billion on Feb 2, 2024.

Apple and Tesla in the Red

Tesla has lost over a quarter of its value YTD as EV hype continues to fizzle out. Other pure play EV stocks like Rivian and Lucid are also down significantly in 2024.

Meanwhile, Apple shares have struggled due to weakening demand for its products in China, as well as the company’s lack of progress in the artificial intelligence (AI) space.

Investors may have also been disappointed to hear that Apple’s electric car project, which started a decade ago, has been scrapped.

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