Productive and sustainable Denmark

Three magic words: competitiveness, productivity, prosperity.

Studying innovative and competitive independent countries, or states of the USA, much of the Europe 2020 growth strategy (EU2020) is about learning from the best.

Before turning to the WEF pillars of competitiveness, we had already taken a peek at the economy and society of Denmark.

We have also seen that among the 142 countries and territories compared by the World Economic Forum, Denmark ranked eighth according in the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) 2011-2012 (table 3, page 15):

Klaus Schwab (Editor): The Global Competitiveness Report 2011-2012 (World Economic Forum WEF; 527 pages)

Tables 4 to 7 allow us to get a more detailed view of how competitive Denmark (or another country) is with regard to different groups of criteria or pillars, more fully explained on pages 47-49. According to the summary on page 24, Denmark has quality institutions, infrastructure and education like its Nordic neighbours, but its labour market flexibility is a distinguishing feature.

A fourth magic word is 'sustainability'.

The Sustainable Competitiveness Index (SCI; beta version) was presented by the WEF for the first time. The challenging and interesting SCI tries to determine the level of productivity while ensuring the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The SCI is an effort to integrate factors of economic, social and environmental sustainability. Denmark came in eighth in the integrated GCI as well.

Country presentation

You find the country presentation of Denmark on the pages 162-163, including the most problematic factors for doing business, as well as the scores for about a hundred different factors.



Ralf Grahn