17/6/2014: Some more troublesome facts about European Competitiveness rankings...

Yesterday, I posted briefly on World Economic Forum Competitiveness Rankings for European Union. That post is available here.

Since then, few people came back to me with a request of running the same analysis across all countries covered in the report. So here it is.

First, WEF Rankings:

Supposedly, higher ranking (lower rank number) means better economic competitiveness. Which should imply two things:
1) Negative correlation between rank and economic growth (higher competitiveness --> higher growth in the economy)
2) Negative correlation between rank improvement (improved rankings) and economic growth (improving competitiveness --> higher growth).

Here is a chart plotting average growth rate in the economies covered by WEF over 2010-2013 (same result, qualitatively, holds for 2012-2013 average, to remove some of the volatility in growth rates) and WEF rankings improvements:

No, statistically-speaking there is no relationship of any meaning between WEF Competitiveness performance over 2012-2014 and growth performance over 2010-2013.

What about rank performance in 2014 and 2012-2013 growth rates?

Nope. No relationship at all.

How about rank performance in 2012 against future 2012-2013 growth?

Totally zero relationship.

So what does this WEF Competitiveness indicator measure exactly? Pet projects of WEF members? Intensity of politically correct policies deployment in the European states? I have no idea, but their competitiveness seems to have preciously nada to do with growth performance...