Competitiveness: From a Dangerous Obsession to a Welfare Creating Ability with Positive Externalities
Karl Aiginger
Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, 2006, vol. 6, issue 2, 177 pages
Abstract:
The attempt to define the term “competitiveness of nations” has reached the phase of decreasing returns. Fortunately, the literature seems to be converging slightly, a tendency, we hope to accelerate. We propose (1) defining competitiveness as “the ability of a country or location to create welfare.” We maintain (2) that a comprehensive evaluation contains an output evaluation and a process evaluation. We claim (3) that the output evaluation (competitiveness achieved) is closely related to a welfare assessment, with a specific slant and stepwise operationalisations. Furthermore, (4) process evaluation (investigating the ability) is related to the analysis of production and technology functions, adding qualitative elements like strategies, and the strengths and weaknesses of a country. This consensus is at variance with the concept of price competitiveness; it sidelines the importance of external balances, while the productivity approach to competitiveness is nested within. Dangerous obsessions and wrong policy conclusions can never be excluded, but are much less likely if we use this approach to competitiveness—as compared to concepts focusing on price competitiveness or on external balances. Specifically, the greater competitiveness of one country must not necessarily go hand in hand with lower competitiveness in other countries. In advanced countries specifically, policies promoting the ability to create welfare will create positive spillovers into other economies. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2006
Keywords: competitiveness; welfare evaluation; innovation; Lisbon strategy; F10; F15; F43; O31; O40; O57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (85)
Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10842-006-9475-6 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jincot:v:6:y:2006:i:2:p:161-177
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... on/journal/10842/PS2
DOI: 10.1007/s10842-006-9475-6
Access Statistics for this article
Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade is currently edited by Karl Aiginger, Marcel Canoy and Michael Peneder
More articles in Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().